Comment by geerlingguy
1 day ago
Audio shouldn't be a big problem for the Pi unless you're pumping it through tons of heavy filters. The Pi 5's CPU can hold its own against 2010-2015 era iMacs, and a good microSD card easily holds 40-50 MB/sec writes.
For better performance, I'd plug in a USB SSD (USB 3.0 can put through 300 MB/sec or more), or even use built in Ethernet, good for writing 100 MB/sec out to a NAS or another networked computer.
Is there a reason you couldn't use the USB audio and MIDI gadget drivers to pass through FireWire audio interfaces as class-compliant USB devices?
You could even use a virtual MIDI interface as a convenient way to control features beyond those supported by the USB audio class, along the lines of
https://github.com/michaelforney/oscmix/wiki/Protocol
Do you have any preferred SD card brands and models? Speedy and durable cards suitable for RPi
I used to buy SanDisk Ultra (if I didn't need speed), Samsung Pro+ (if I did), or SanDisk Industrial (if I needed more reliability... not sure how big a difference it makes but I've never had one fail).
But since Raspberry Pi launched their own microSD cards, I've been buying them. They haven't failed me yet and are pretty fast.
The Industrial lineup is dog slow though. That's the trade for SLC.
For cheap yet snappy cards, I have been using Kingston Canvas Go Plus with great success. When used in a Raspberry Pi 5, I personally don't feel any lag. A couple of them are serving 7/24/365 in my RPi5 systems without any problems for more than 2 years.
I don't hammer them with I/O though. For heavy writes, I'd consider Sandisk's higher tier cards (esp. Extreme Pro), which I use in my cameras and never managed to break one.
Fwiw, it is also possible to make a Pi boot from usb.
If you want to use the RPi instead of fixing the RPi becoming a new hobby, the preference is to avoid SD cards and write to USB SSD/network as OP recommended.