simplecut Is it possible to access the raw audio data in any way from within the underlying linux?
not really.
simplecut Am I correct in thinking that if I go down the BeagleBoard/ALSA route then I wont have access to the Bela IDE
You could have access to it, but none of the programs provided by it will run. Still, if you want to use it for its editor capabilities, that'll be fine, but probably the BeagleBoard-provided IDE is a better choice as it comes with a different set of examples which will actually work (though I am not sure they have any audio ones).
yes
simplecut Also, which beagleboard image should I flash it with
the most recent will do
simplecut how do I revert back to the bela image if it all goes wrong?
the easiest route is to keep the BeagleBoard image on the SD card to try things out. If you don't like it, remove the SD card and it will go back to the Bela image.
simplecut I've been looking around the UDPServer/USPClient route but can't find any example anywhere to pipe audio with it.
is this to send audio data elsewhere on the board or to a different device on a local network? In the former case, this approach is probably overkill and a Pipe
object to a virtual alsa soundcard is probably a better approach.
simplecut t can't find any example anywhere to pipe audio with it.
There's not one. This one streams uncompressed audio via TCP. It uses big buffers (i.e.: high latency) to avoid overruns, but it was designed for working on a 16 channel board; buffer sizes can probably be decreased for your application. Also remove the fileOut
object as that also writes to disk.
simplecut Is the audio stream available on the i2c buss that I can tap off externally?
There is and I2S (not I2C) stream that you could tap on.
simplecut I also thought maybe I could write to some shared memory somewhere and read it externally?
externally from where? Yes you could in principle use shared memory to communicate with a different process, but you'll have to do it with the very same tight timing requirements that the Bela code uses, or you won't read the memory fast enough and it may be partially overwritten by the time you are done reading.
What is your application exactly?