Beocreate – Use SigmaStudio

 

Beocreate – Use SigmaStudio

While you can use the Beocreate 4 channel amplifier just as a simple amplifier or use or pre-defined sound profile templates, advanced users can create their own DSP programs. This gives you the greatest functionality. The cool thing: You don’t have to fiddle around with USB programming equipment. You can simply program the DSP over the network (Ethernet/WiFi).

To use SigmaStudio you will need a Windows PC. If you’re using Linux or MacOS, you can use SigmaStudio in a virtual machine running Windows (you will need a VM software and a Windows license).

Install SigmaStudio and create a project

To use the SigmaStudio DSP design toolkit, you first need to download it from the Analog Devices web site. Then install it.

Designing a DSP program from scratch can be quite difficult. The DSP used on the Beocreate board is very powerful and has a lot of internal registers. Setting only one of them incorrectly can result in all kinds of problems. Therefore we do not recommend that you start a project from scratch, but use our template project from us. You can just download it from here. You can add/remove components as you like, but we recommend not to edit the hardware configuration as long as you aren’t exactly sure what you’re doing.

Connect the the Beocreate board and upload the program

Now comes the fun part: Programming the DSP via network. Select the “Hardware configuration” tab and right-click onto the “TCPIP” box. Click on “Show TCPIP Settings”.

Enter the IP address of your Raspberry Pi with the Beocreate software running in the IP address field and click “Open Connection”.

Unfortunately, you won’t get any feedback that SigmaStudio is connected now. Now select “Action/Link Compile Download”. If everything worked, you should see “Active: Downloaded” in the lower right corner of the SigmaStudio window.

In the schematic windows you can now change settings of the filter components. They will be updated in real-time. So you can always hear the effect of changes. If you add or remove a component are change the connection between components, you have to download the program to the DSP again using “Link Compile Download”.

Finalizing it – writing the EEPROM

You have successfully created a DSP program and you’re happy with your setting – well done! Unfortunately it will be gone after a reset. So let’s make sure that won’t happen. The DSP board has an onboard EEPROM that can store the program. If the “SELFBOOT” jumper is set on the board, after a reset it will boot from the EEPROM. You can write the program to the EEPROM directly from SigmaStudio.

Go to the “Hardware configuration” tab and right-click on the ADAU1451 component. Select “Self-boot memory”/”Write latest compilation trough DSP”.

The default settings in the following dialog are ok, you should not change them.

When you now press “OK”, Sigma studio will stop your DSP program, write it to the DSP and boot from it again.

You can test that the selfboot works fine on the Raspberry Pi by resetting the DSP:

gpio mode 0 out
gpio write 0 0; sleep 1; gpio write 0 1

Example project

Download an example 2-way project.