Genuine Question - What's going on with the noise complaints with the Electro-Smith?

[mzy12]

I want to get into building and creating digital effects, and while the the Electro-Smith Daisy looks like a great place to be, a very popular thing on this forum seems to be posts trying to troubleshoot and fix noise issues. Different revisions seem to have different problems. While I'd be excited to work on something as powerful as the Daisy, the noise complaints do not inspire confidence, nor do the various different hacky solutions, like that recent one where some made a lowpass filter because the audio codec wanted to see some load on it.

I'm just looking for opinions from people who have developed with this vs other DSP platforms. I fully admit, I may be blowing the noise problems out of the water, but I'd prefer not to invest significant time into a platform if the results will be disappointing or if I have to fight with it every step of the way

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[passtheducky]

The problems that people have had with the Daisy are more or less the same problems that people would have with any other comparable platform, based on their use case and their level of expertise.

 

[keyth72]

In my mind the Daisy Seed is still the easiest and most powerful DSP platform out there, vs the cost, which is why I’m willing to put in the effort to figure out a good guitar pedal solution for the latest revision. I’ve done some audio effects on raspberry pi, and it’s powerful, but expensive and not really streamlined for audio. I’ve looked into teensy, but it seems like more work upfront than the Daisy environment. FV1 looks interesting, but need to learn a whole new coding paradigm, where Daisy uses the more widely known c++ and some visual programming options (I’m not familiar but I think max/gen and pure data are some of these). Short of designing my own chip around STM32 H7, Daisy Seed is a no brainer, at least for what I’m familiar with for programming.

Noise has always been an issue for DSP, but in this particular revision (rev 7) the codec chip is different, the rev 4 codec OEM burned down and then the rev 5 codec I think was phased out, but the the latest rev 7 is a stable solution as far as sourcing from what I’ve heard. I think the operating requirements are slightly different, which is where the old terrarium design may not fall within, hence the workarounds. For synth stuff (line level) I think it works fine, but guitar pedals usually have an extra buffer which needs to be designed for the current chip. Some people say they've gotten it to work fine with the current terrarium, so I’m still not 100% sure but I think the low pass filter is where the diy community is at, for guitar pedal using Daisy seed.

 

[Aentons]

I think they are coming out with a guitar pedal focused submodule soon that is supposed to solve the issue.

 

[sonic_explorer]

I think they are coming out with a guitar pedal focused submodule soon that is supposed to solve the issue.

I am wondering if the Electrosmith people are having issues trying to solve the noise issue also. Their new submodules/pedal testing platform has been in the works (pictures posted on unlisted webpages and on their owners webpage) since at least December.

I have also been unable to fully remove the excess noise (even with the low-pass filter - which did lower, but not eliminate the noise I saw), but agree with @keyth72 that the ability to get up to speed quickly with the Daisy seed makes it really attractive still. I am still hopeful a solid, consistent noise solution can be found - but I do not know much about the interworkings of the DSP chip.

 

[mzy12]

The problems that people have had with the Daisy are more or less the same problems that people would have with any other comparable platform, based on their use case and their level of expertise.

I don't doubt that stuff like bad grounding contributes to this problem. Most analog pedals you see people build on this site and elsewhere do not observe a 'proper' grounding scheme. That's not shade I'm throwing at all you guys out here, a lot of my earlier pedals have sub-optimal grounding schemes and they don't have a problem, it just doesn't matter all the time pedals. Even stuff like production amps built by fender and marshall don't do that (though in the case of amps the consequences are a lot more obvious). But I do have to wonder why there's a lot of fuss made about the noise on the Daisy Petal compared to the FV-1. I could easily be extrapolating from too small a pool of data, I will admit that.

I have also been unable to fully remove the excess noise (even with the low-pass filter - which did lower, but not eliminate the noise I saw), but agree with @keyth72 that the ability to get up to speed quickly with the Daisy seed makes it really attractive still. I am still hopeful a solid, consistent noise solution can be found - but I do not know much about the interworkings of the DSP chip.

See that's the kind of comment I keep coming back to. It seems like the solutions to this problem have been hypothesised, tested, and found to be inadequate. It is not necessarily confidence inspiring.

 

[Giorfida]

I don't doubt that stuff like bad grounding contributes to this problem. Most analog pedals you see people build on this site and elsewhere do not observe a 'proper' grounding scheme. That's not shade I'm throwing at all you guys out here, a lot of my earlier pedals have sub-optimal grounding schemes and they don't have a problem, it just doesn't matter all the time pedals. Even stuff like production amps built by fender and marshall don't do that (though in the case of amps the consequences are a lot more obvious). But I do have to wonder why there's a lot of fuss made about the noise on the Daisy Petal compared to the FV-1. I could easily be extrapolating from too small a pool of data, I will admit that.


See that's the kind of comment I keep coming back to. It seems like the solutions to this problem have been hypothesised, tested, and found to be inadequate. It is not necessarily confidence inspiring.

Boogie is notorious for bad grounding schemes. Plug a processor (or even physical pedalboard) into a MKv using 4cable method/remote switching, and expect ground loop hum unless you start using isolators. A proper grounding scheme would have eliminated that.

 

[mzy12]

Boogie is notorious for bad

Coulda stopped there! Being a massive Mike Oldfield fan, I love the SOUND of Boogies, but being a watcher of Psionic Audio's repairs, I know I am never ever dropping my hard earned cash on one of their ticking design time bombs. Or already set off design bombs. I'm learning to build my own amps because I cannot trust the quality of anything for sale under 2000-3000 eurodollarpounds.