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No red light in optical ports. Digi I/O. Alsa -l sees card fine. Raspbian

fda_requirement

June 08, 2020 19:27

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Hello. I just can't get the red light inside either optical socket to light up on my new Digi I/O. (And no sound).
Is this always a sign of bad hardware? Sorry I have no coax equipment to compare.

The config went fine I think, seemed easy, I'm ok with terminal stuff.
The OS is Raspbian 10 (Buster)
Aplay -l showed the card fine, I connected it to the optical-in of some reliable equipment I know well, but this equipment's digital sync light showed no sync for the Digi I/O. There's no red light inside the optical socket with the door or the one without.

It sounds similar to the defective Digi+ here:
support.hifiberry.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/201493822-Digi-not-working-

(That post mentions a test tone image which I would be happy to try before returning the hardware but all links I've found lead to your "nothing found page.")

Sorry I have nothing with a coax input to compare with the optical, but otherwise do the above things sound like my Digi I/O has a fault?

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6 comments

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team June 09, 2020 04:39

  The optical output will only turn on when you play something through the Digi+. What's the output of "aplay .-l"?

• 0
  
  fda_requirement June 09, 2020 19:13

  Got it. In the Raspbian Audio Device Settings GUI pref panel you can choose AIF or S/PDIF RX

  I had S/PDIF RX selected, I guess that's actually for recording? Spdif sounded like the right option at first but I should have been a bit smarter when thinking about the rx bit.

  With AIF chosen playback through VLC now works if I tell it explicitly to use the card. I've still got problems but I don't think they are the card's fault. I've put them after the line below but they're things for me to look into really.

   

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  VLC can only use the card if I explicitly tell it to. Setting it to use the "Default" card gives an error but I think this is a Raspbian issue cos a USB soundcard had the same problem.

   

  Alsa is not happy either. This bit seems fine?

  **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
  card 0: sndrpihifiberry [snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi], device 0: HifiBerry Digi HiFi wm8804-spdif-0 [HifiBerry Digi HiFi wm8804-spdif-0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

   

  But if I do:

  aplay some_sound.wav

  aplay: main:828: audio open error: No such file or directory

   

  I'm going to consider these as parts of the same problem and learn more about Alsa.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team June 09, 2020 20:06

  The audio open error probably means that some other process is already using the sound card. There can be only one process using the sound card.
  
  

• 0
  
  fda_requirement June 09, 2020 20:44

  Nearly, the answer is bizarre. There was an .asoundrc in my home folder that somehow had root.root permissions. No idea what did this.

  It specifies card 1 as default and as I switched off the internal pi soundcard in /boot/config.txt there is no card 1 hence the errors. And because the file was root.root the Raspbian sound prefs couldn't change the default card to the digi i/o.

  If I hadn't switched off the card then the internal pi soundcard would have been card 1 and I would have got the internal sound instead of the digi i/o and been unable to switch because the prefs couldn't write to the file. I would have wondered why I couldn't change the default card. This is what happened with the usb soundcard I mentioned.

  This card's great. Thanks for the fast replies.

• 0
  
  fda_requirement June 09, 2020 20:48

  I should have made clear what I did to fix this in case anyone's reading. I changed the 1s in that file to 0s so they referred to the correct card. I also corrected the permissions so other things can change the file if they want. Deleting the file (or renaming it to something as a backup) actually also seems to work, I guess then the settings in /etc/asound.conf are honoured instead.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team June 10, 2020 08:04

  Yes, ALSA first checks for an .asoundrc in the home directory. If this isn't there (which usually isn't) it uses /etc/asound.conf