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Get digi io to reccord

Guillaume

October 17, 2021 20:15

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Hiya,

I have been a happy user of a rasp3 + Digi+ for some times. Now I want to be able to pipe my CD player output into the system so I can record the stream, play it on the hifi system, etc. so I purchased a Digi+ I/O which I thought was adapted given the simplicity of my use case (in particular I only want to use a CD player).

Setting up the card was easy and I can play my music just like before using aplay or for instance moode. But when I try to capture the toslink input, however hard I try I merely obtain an empty wav file.

I have used the following command as a test

arecord -d 10 -c 2 -f CD -vv test2.wav

Which then produces the following output:

Recording WAVE 'test2.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo
Plug PCM: Hardware PCM card 0 'snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi' device 0 subdevice 0
Its setup is:
  stream       : CAPTURE
  access       : RW_INTERLEAVED
  format       : S16_LE
  subformat    : STD
  channels     : 2
  rate         : 44100
  exact rate   : 44100 (44100/1)
  msbits       : 16
  buffer_size  : 22052
  period_size  : 5513
  period_time  : 125011
  tstamp_mode  : NONE
  tstamp_type  : MONOTONIC
  period_step  : 1
  avail_min    : 5513
  period_event : 0
  start_threshold  : 1
  stop_threshold   : 22052
  silence_threshold: 0
  silence_size : 0
  boundary     : 1445199872
  appl_ptr     : 0
  hw_ptr       : 0
#+                                                 | 00%

Plugin the CD player works like expected so I doubt the problem comes from it.

While I typically use the moode image disk, exactly the same happens with a fresh install of hifiberryos.

For the sake of completeness here is my config.txt

$ cat /boot/config.txt
disable_splash=1
disable_overscan=1
hdmi_drive=2
hdmi_blanking=1
hdmi_force_edid_audio=1
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_group=0
dtparam=i2c_arm=on
dtparam=i2s=on
#dtparam=audio=off
dtoverlay=hifiberry-digi
#dtoverlay=disable-wifi
dtoverlay=disable-bt

And

aplay -l
**** 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

Am I missing something obvious here? I did read more than 30 posts related to the digi+ but had no luck here.

Cheers!
Guillaume.

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20 comments

• 0
  
  Neeraj Raghuvanshi October 20, 2021 04:46

  Hi

  I also have Digi +IO for same reason to simplify setup.

  Seeing exactly same issue - No "Capture" device is detected.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team October 20, 2021 06:13

  "No capture device" shows that there's something wrong with your ALSA config. Check the output of
  
  arecord -L
  
  
  

• 0
  
  Neeraj Raghuvanshi October 20, 2021 06:34

  pi@raspberrypi:~ $ arecord -L
  null
  Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
  default:CARD=sndrpihifiberry
  snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi, HifiBerry Digi HiFi wm8804-spdif-0
  Default Audio Device
  sysdefault:CARD=sndrpihifiberry
  snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi, HifiBerry Digi HiFi wm8804-spdif-0
  Default Audio Device
  iec958:CARD=sndrpihifiberry,DEV=0
  snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi, HifiBerry Digi HiFi wm8804-spdif-0
  IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
  dmix:CARD=sndrpihifiberry,DEV=0
  snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi, HifiBerry Digi HiFi wm8804-spdif-0
  Direct sample mixing device
  dsnoop:CARD=sndrpihifiberry,DEV=0
  snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi, HifiBerry Digi HiFi wm8804-spdif-0
  Direct sample snooping device
  hw:CARD=sndrpihifiberry,DEV=0
  snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi, HifiBerry Digi HiFi wm8804-spdif-0
  Direct hardware device without any conversions
  plughw:CARD=sndrpihifiberry,DEV=0
  snd_rpi_hifiberry_digi, HifiBerry Digi HiFi wm8804-spdif-0
  Hardware device with all software conversions

   

• 0
  
  Neeraj Raghuvanshi October 20, 2021 06:35

  pi@raspberrypi:~ $ arecord -l
  **** List of CAPTURE 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

• 0
  
  Neeraj Raghuvanshi October 20, 2021 06:51

  I am able to record now. The device was supposed to be Index-0 after I disabled rpi audio.

  However the recording has very extreme noise in it

  root@raspberrypi:~# arecord -f cd -d 10 /tmp/1.wav
  Recording WAVE '/tmp/1.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo

  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xItOgNrAdVactSEfWhOIUXC1oNeyYH92/view?usp=sharing

• 0
  
  Neeraj Raghuvanshi October 20, 2021 07:48

  Resolved for me -

  The Bitrate mismatch - as the IO is pass thru (mentioned in other document)

• 0
  
  Guillaume October 20, 2021 11:51

  Good for you Neeraj Raghuvanshi that you could find your problem. Next time you might want to open a separate discussion since your issue was obviously a different one.

  HiFiBerry team do you have any clue of what is happening in the original post?

  Cheers!
  Guillaume.

   

• 0
  
  Neeraj Raghuvanshi October 20, 2021 14:49

  Hi Gullaume

  I found similar symptoms so posted under your issue hoping to get and help each other resolution together. No intention to hijack it. I was about to try older kernel as mentioned in other post (but not for digi+io)

  Have you tried changing capture bitrate like I did. I am using latest rasberian-lite 5.4.10 kernel that has latest drivers. With PCM in from optical the capture setting on +IO must match exactly what source is producing. Also start capturing only when it is transmitting to be on safe side.

  To have deeper control I am using my python script to capture audio using alsaudio-python package. 

   

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team October 20, 2021 15:42

  Guillaume There might be a defective GPIO on your Pi, if you only get samples that are zer (if that's what you mean by "empty WAV file".

• 0
  
  Guillaume October 20, 2021 19:58

  That makes sense to me. And yes the generated wav files only contain 0s.

  A first test using the pintest utility ( https://github.com/WiringPi/WiringPi/blob/master/gpio/pintest ) did not result in any error but I will try to get my hands on another pi3 to test this more properly.

  Thanks a lot for the guidance, I will report my finding here as soon as I can find a device (which might not be so soon).

  Edited by Guillaume October 20, 2021 19:59
• 0
  
  Guillaume November 11, 2021 20:25

  Hi there,

  I finally got a brand new raspberry 3 board.
  But unfortunately no change, wav files are still 0. Using --vumeter=stereo  as option confirms no signal seems to reach arecord.

  HiFiBerry team since you pointed to a possible defective pi, could the same happen on the digi board?
  Or do you have any other suggestions?

  Cheers,
  Guillaume

   

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team November 12, 2021 13:39

  Theoretically this could also be a defective Digi+. Is the output working fine? If it is, the chance of a hardware problem is very low. But in the end, we can only say if we tested it here.

• 0
  
  Guillaume November 13, 2021 06:29

  Output works fine.

  Another attempt yesterday was very puzzling: when I use alsamixer to switch the input signal from AIF to S/PDIF RX playback works. So that would rule out a problem of input signal and wrong sampling, etc. parameters I suppose.

  To get the system to mirror the input spdif to output spdif I now do the following

  amixer sset 'Tx Source' 'S/PDIF RX'
  
  arecord -f cd | aplay

  And the reverse amixer sset command to switch back to the AIF input

  Is there any hidden variable somewhere I do not know about?

  Things are reproducible on a freshly installed hifiberry system and moode (though they are fairly similar obviously).

   

   

  Edited by Guillaume November 13, 2021 06:39
• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team November 15, 2021 06:00

  Switching the TX source has nothing to do with the interface to the Pi. It will route the signal directly on the Digi. The arecord/aplay commands won't have any effect at all in this case. There is no hidden variable, but Tx source need to be set to AIF.

• 0
  
  Guillaume November 15, 2021 07:43

  Well you will pardon me for expressing some frustration here, but yes all this was clear.

  In the end I still have a broken system, which does not behave as expected and I am still trying to debug it in the dark. I did follow up on you suggestion to get another pi board, read all the docs I could and re-performed all tests multiple times with different OS.

  Do you have any suggestion on how to move forward. Would you be ready to test the digi board?

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team November 15, 2021 07:44

  Yes, we can test the hardware for you. In this case, please contact us at support@hifiberry.com and we'll follow up with the next steps.

• 0
  
  Guillaume November 15, 2021 07:57

  Ok, thanks a lot. I just contacted the mentioned address.

• 0
  
  Yush July 01, 2023 23:40

  Hey Guillaume, what was the outcome? 

• 0
  
  Guillaume July 03, 2023 19:20

  Effectively the card was deffective. After replacement things worked just like expected.

• 0
  
  Yush July 07, 2023 03:00

  I just ordered one of eBay (seems they are making them anymore) and hoping I experience no issues.  Appreciate the response, thanks!