James Robertson's Eight-Channel Tsunami Super WAV Trigger Audio Board Lands at SparkFun

SparkFun, in partnership with James Robertson's robertsonics, has launched the Qwiic Tsunami Super WAV Trigger — an Arm Cortex-M7-based development board designed for audio work.

"Tsunami is an advanced polyphonic embedded audio player, capable of playing 44.1kHz, 16-bit mono or stereo .wav files (tracks) from an on-board microSD card," Robertson explains of the board. "Depending on whether it is running in mono or stereo mode, it can play up 18 stereo or 32 mono tracks independently and simultaneously, mixing them to any of either 4 stereo or 8 mono line-level audio outputs."

"Up to 4096 tracks can be indexed and started with low latency (typically 8ms) using either 16 programmable trigger inputs, a serial control port or a dedicated MIDI port."

Building atop the WAV Trigger, the Tsunami offers four stereo outputs totalling eight output channels, an increased number of voices, seamless looping, and a dedicated opto-isolated MIDI input — and is positioned by Robertson as "possibly the first embedded audio player capable of playing 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound with a single trigger input."

In mono mode, the board also adds a "Synced Set" trigger function capable of starting up to eight mono tracks across adjacent outputs. On the software side, support is provided for programming in the Arduino IDE or Python — and the board can also be controlled via serial. A Qwiic connector, meanwhile, allows for solderless connectivity to Qwiic-compatible projects.

The board is now available on SparkFun, priced at $79.95 before volume discounts.