Pi2 / hifiberry dac+ hardware volume problems

Pi MusicBox
1

Hello,

I was running a Pi2 / pimusicbox 0.6 with good results (mostly) but by adding a Hifiberry dac+ I’m running into this problem. Basically I couldn’t access musicbox.local anymore.

I managed to get it to work again using Bram_Maes settings from this thread:

https://discourse.mopidy.com/t/attached-new-hifiberry-dac-but-now-musicbox-local-stopped-working/?source_topic_id=706

but the output of the card is now so high I have to set the software volume very low or there’s clipping/saturation. I have it plugged into a preamp. As it is the sound quality is not as good as what I was getting with the Pi2 headphone jack.

If I try to enable hardware mixer the server stops working and I can’t access musicbox.local again

2

If you want to use hardware mixing and set mixer = alsamixer I think you need to also make sure the [alsamixer] settings are correct. I guess aplay -l should tell you the card to use, and then amixer scontrols should help you find what control you need to set. I only have a Hifberry DAC which, unlike the DAC+, doesn’t support hardware mixing so I can’t personally help much. If the server stops working after changing to alsamixer then please look in /var/log/mopidy/mopidy.log for the reason why.

3

Hi kingosticks,

I tried a few control settings but that one made it.

control = Digital

Thanks!

4

Fantastic. Thanks for updating us, I’ll add that to the wiki.

5

For me these settings work with the DAC+ and PI2:

mixer_volume = 85
mixer = alsamixer

[alsamixer]
card = 1
control = PCM

6

These settings worked for me (Raspberry Pi 2 & Hifiberry DAC+ & Pi MusicBOX 0.6)

[alsamixer]
card = 1
control = PCM

I found that selecting hifiberry dac+ through the settings would result in a crash. Editing the .ini file however seemed to work great. setting control=digital resulted in great sound @ 85% but no volume control through the GUI. Setting to PCM enables volume control in the GUI.

The volume increments are rather large, very little output up to 70% then big jumps… is there a reason for this? any Suggestions??

Thanks for the great comments so far in the forums, very helpful all round, and thanks for an amazing distro to go on my PI!!

WES

7

I have the same issue
My config: B+ and a Hifiberry Dac+
mixer is set to alsamixer and mixer_volume = 50

A little output at 50-60% and then big steps from 70 to 100%, so hardly to control!!
In the rune_audio forum they have encountered the same issue with hardware volume control: Volume control; Linear or logarithmic?

Besides that, I have done all the settings through the ini-file. But when I change settings (like the autoplaywait) through the GUI. After the reboot the mixer is set to “software” and then a standard volume level of 50% is very LOUD!

Kind regards

Harry