Dummies Guide to Pi2AES! Throw away your PC or laptop.

Whenever I get an ALSA error (happens *very* rarely) I change the I2S output to something random and restart the Pi. Then I change it to Hifiberry Digi+ Pro (this the correct setting for Pi2AES) and restart the Pi again.

 

To elaborate in what Michael Kelly stated just above, you need to make sure that under Volumio's Settings > Playback Options that you have "HiFiBerry Digi+ Pro" as your "DAC Model" and "I2S DAC" toggled to "On" . Make sure you then press the "Save" button in that same box.

 

and you may have to restart, make the setting, save and restart again more than one time.

 

Hi Guys, Dummy still here, Trying over and over.
PI2AES, I disconnected all cable except for COAX and HDMI (into Pi2AES HDMI port).
Topping D90, only the HDMI and COAX cable installed.
Set the I2S to enabled, HIFIBERRY Digi+Pro set and SAVED,
Topping D90 set to COAX and also tried setting to IIS.
Restart successful in Volumio, but STILL get the ALSA failed error after restart.
Tried many times. same error.
I'm going to continue. I'll check back for ideas.
sleep what sleep
thx for the suggestions. btw- if I go back to USB, turn off I2S and set to USB, topping d90 works every time.
go back in the startup wizard, turn I2S on, and change to HIFIberry digi+pro, save, restart, ALSA failed message (change D90 to Coax, or IIS thinking the D90 needs to match up). nada, never gets synced up.

 

The VERY thegratefuldad1 Dummy here, tears, stoked Thank you Thank you
SUCCESS!!!!!
Last thing I did was to do a FACTORY RESET of Volumio.,
redid everything (ran Wizard). saved, restarted and
We HAVE SYNC, Both IIS and COAX!!!!!
I'm flabbergasted!
Thank you once again.
I really appreciate the forum, I might even get some sleep tonight if I can pull myself away from the PI2,
I'm going to start listening and moving on to getting ROON going.
But now that I know I have this sync, I should be able to make progress.
Did I thank you guys enough.
Peace, Love and SOUL!!!!!

 

I am truly sorry you had to go through this. As much as I would like to blame Volumio however, much of the fault lies with the underlying Linux sub system called MPD. There seems to be some weird interaction between the upper layer software and this layer because the same thing tends to happen with moode audio.

I personally haven’t use the other players enough to know if they are also susceptible to this weirdness.

 

No worries Michael.
I'm an old-timer in many different things.
I used to be a tech for Bob Korn of the Unix Korn shell fame.
Working at Bell Labs Building 5.
This brought back the old days.
New OS called UNIX, SYS5, etc Fighting Unix.
I'm so old I used to work on IBM disk drives that worked on Hydraulic oil.
Seek checks, add Hydraulic oil! 2314s a hole 20mb per platter.
Paper card readers, punch tape, what freaking Internet, we had NO internet!
Beepers were new technology. Motorola black flip phones.
GPS, lol we had no GPS ....maps!
Computer rooms, now fit on your fingernail,
virtual machines, lol
Those were the days. This brought back so many memories of the old days.
thanks Michael, what a wonderful product you put together.

 

Not a Dummy anymore.
Well maybe
MICHAEL
Did your little magic PI2AES box negate the need for my Bluesound Node AND my SOTM Ultra Neo Streamers?
OMG, now I have to unload, sell these useless streamers.
Day late many dollars down the drain, I guess this is what they call progress.
What beautiful music I'm hearing all going through the PI2 through Topping D90 using ROON interface.
All grouped together.
Gonna try and get some sleep and think about what to do with the Bluesound and SOTM (doorstop perhaps).
oh well, it's been a really good day!

 

If there’s a problem then MPD will throw an error but it’s “just” the software usually responsible for actual music playback, the fault here is with ALSA configuration. My guess is that like you suggested earlier the system wasn’t getting rebooted between changes to the i2s driver and so the right one was never loaded.

 

Hi Michael, finally ready to try removing the jumper and feed an ipower x psu to power the rpi4 with a 24v lps to feed the pi2aes.

Can you please advise the sequence for powering on and off for the rpi4 and the pi2aes?

thx

Deric

 

Pi2AES is powered on before the RPi, otherwise it won’t be activated on boot up of the OS. Power off prob doesn’t matter that much, but if you think about it, RPi first makes the most sense.

 

that is correct!

 

So volumio comes with MPD that can be updated, or there are patched versions of mpd that you can update independently. Does anyone know stuff about that, does that make anything better?

 

I know moOde updates MPD quite often, not sure about volumio.

There is very deep documentation on MPD located here: MPD User Manual

 

I'm looking to install Tidal on Raspberry Pi. Is this the best way you know: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=297771

No, I don't want the paid Volumio subscription, I'm using Ubuntu Server OS.

 

If you find yourself experiencing drop-outs, it may not be your internet or USB source. I was having drop out issues constantly (and Schiit DACs clickity-clacking left and right) and kept chasing ethernet/wireless causes which I never found. Finally, ran into a post on the Volumio forum that mentioned SD card speed and ordered a new one. I've been drop-out free for 4 days now. For reference, the cards I was using before were of ~100mb read/write speed, the new one is 285mb read and 165mb write speeds. Link to card https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0858KP33K?ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details&th=1

 

Samsung BAR Plus 32GB - 200MB/s USB 3.1 Flash Drive Titan Gray (MUF-... https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07BPKKYHY/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_glt_i_4CBB7FQ16ZZMBRNE91AJ?psc=1

Been using one of these flash drive instead of sd card, @200Mbs it boots up much faster and even within moode, the program seems to response faster as well.

Definitely worth it for $13

Deric

 

Price-wise that makes sense. But I prefer to shut off the USB ports so SD it is for me.

 

For a card going into a rPi, phone, tablet, etc... you may want to consider looking at the random read/write speeds vs sequential (which is more useful for cameras).

The new A1/A2 ratings for sd cards capture this:

• A1
  • Random Read: 1500 IOPS
  • Random Write: 500 IOPS
  • Sustained Sequential Write: 10 megabytes per second
• A2
  • Random Read: 4000 IOPS
  • Random Write: 2000 IOPS
  • Sustained Sequential Write: 10 megabytes per second

Of course, if your using the card in a phone/tablet as simply storage for the camera in the phone, or to hold music files), then the speed ratings may be more useful. The A1/A2 are really geared towards devices that extend the OS or applications onto the card.

 

More easily digestible info on this, and how to easily benchmark test your card for A1/2 compliance https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/sd-card-speed-test/

However, I'd like to see something in terms of read/write speeds requirements for rPi audio OSs. Like is A1 more than enough? Or what's the optimal speed?