Ahoy!

 

I'm looking for a cheap SBC with mainline kernel support (so hopefully Armbian support too) and a stereo line-level input and output. I'd like to also have atleast an ARMv7 or later instruction set (need Neon instructions) and atleast 512 megs of RAM (but 1 or 2 gigs would be nice; and I could survive with 256MB if I work really hard).

 

My use-case is that I intend to pair this up with a cheap mixer and run a few audio plugins via Ardour. Most plugins I use (generally stuff from the Guitarix project) depend on the ARM Neon instructions. The ModDevices project seems to be based off an ARMv7 instruction set based 1GB board so it's kinda sorta my inspiration for the specs.

 

Can the good peeps here suggest some boards?

 

I received an Orange Pi Zero+ today. This has a mic input on the GPIO, which I was hoping to do fun things with (by plugging a guitar into it through monkey wiring a quarter inch jack) but sadly this board is DOA and I returned it to the seller. Mic input is nice, but line input would be better because I can use a mixing board!

 

PS: also open to recommendations of very cheap i2s DACs, like the Mikroe Audio Codec PROTO. But not sure if these have mainline kernel support and just work. Also, they cost almost as much as an SBC so it'd be better to avoid spending so much.

 

The ASUS Tinker Board has a combo 3.5 mm audio jack, and also supports 24-bit audio. If you need separate jacks for audio in and out, you can always use a splitter. Currently, the board is selling for $59. It has enough power to run any audio application you throw at it.

 

I think Nanopi M3 and M4B also have 3.5mm mic in, in case you can find them cheaper than the TB. But I don't think they will offer the same audio quality.

2 hours ago, JMCC said:

The ASUS Tinker Board has a combo 3.5 mm audio jack, and also supports 24-bit audio. If you need separate jacks for audio in and out, you can always use a splitter. Currently, the board is selling for $59. It has enough power to run any audio application you throw at it.

 

I think Nanopi M3 and M4B also have 3.5mm mic in, in case you can find them cheaper than the TB. But I don't think they will offer the same audio quality.

I'm a little concerned that combo jack splitters tend to get noisy. Also, mic in is available in a lot of other boards, but not all seem to have stereo line in. I've seen an Atom based thin client with this setup (incidentally, it costs just slightly more than the ASUS Tinker Board where I live), but not much else.

I think I found the chipset I'd need to find boards for - the Rockchip RK3308. It has 8-channel input. There's one cheap board with this - the Rock Pi S. I'm curious if any of the Rock Pi S users here have got audio input working!