Inexpensive Raspberry Pi computers are perfectly capable of powering JackTrip Studio Servers! This article provides a step-by-step guide to setting up your own.
Introduction
You can run your own JackTrip servers on Raspberry Pi computers that cost as little as $45 (4b and later with 2GB or more memory). It does not even require a paid subscription!
This guide assumes that you are already quite familiar with using your Raspberry Pi and have all the IT skills required for hosting your own studio server. You must be savvy with things like networking, port forwarding, DNS, and certificates. Be sure your plug your Pi into Ethernet. Using Wi-Fi would produce a very poor experience.
I'm going to use the most recent Ubuntu release (25.04) Server edition for this guide. Raspbian is another great option, and you may also have success using Ubuntu 24.04. Almost everything in here should work the same.
Preparing a Micro SD Card
The first thing you'll need to do is download an image file for your Raspberry Pi. On the releases page for Ubuntu 25.04, scroll down to the "Preinstalled server image" section and download the file for "Raspberry Pi Generic (64-bit ARM) preinstalled server image".
Next, open up your favorite software for burning image files onto SD cards. One of my favorites is Balena Etcher, because it is free, easy to use, and works across most operating systems.
First Time Boot
After your SD card is ready, plug it into your Pi's Micro SD slot. Plug in your keyboard, monitor, ethernet, and then finally power to boot it up. You should see a pretty rainbow screen followed several seconds later by scrolling system messages. Note that it has more work to do the first time it boots, so it will take a little longer than normal.
Eventually you will see a prompt to login. Type "ubuntu" for the username followed by "ubuntu" for the password. It will ask you to change the password and then take you to a login prompt.
At this point, you'll want to assign a static IP address to your Pi. There is plenty of information online about how to do this. I prefer to just keep everything using DHCP and just configure my router to always assign it the same IP address.
This may also be a good time to assign a hostname on your network, setup a separate user account or configure SSH keys, but these steps are all completely optional. Personally, once I get a new Pi up and running on the network, I prefer to do everything else from my favorite desktop or laptop computer.
I do recommend updating the system packages and rebooting before you proceed, both for security purposes and to minimize your risk of getting stuck on bugs that have already been fixed:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y
reboot
Install Docker
The easiest way to get going is by using Docker. podman also works great (JackTrip Labs uses podlets on our managed studio servers), but more people are likely already familiar with Docker.
To installer docker:
sudo apt install docker.io docker-compose -y
To enable your current user account to run docker without using "sudo":
sudo usermod -aG docker $USERnewgrp docker # Apply group changes immediately
Next Steps
You are now ready to continue in one of our existing guides:
- Use the jacktrip/studio container to run a full-featured JackTrip studio server. This requires more setup, but includes video, recording, livestreaming, real-time DSP effects, backing tracks, latency synchronization, etc. Step-by-step instructions are available here.
- Use the jacktrip/jacktrip container to run a bare bones JackTrip audio server. This does not support video or any other features, but can be as simple as just running a single command. Step-by-step instructions are available here.
Caveats
- Registering unmanaged servers with JackTrip.com does not require a paid subscription. Using the jacktrip/studio container with a paid subscription will enable your unmanaged studio servers to use all the features included. Without a paid subscription, your unmanaged studios will still be able use all the features included in the "Lite" plan.
- While a Raspberry Pi 4b is sufficient for a few people without default settings, some of the soundscapes settings require more CPU than it can handle. More testing is required to better understand these limits.