LibreELEC Leia (008 Alpha) and HiFiBerry DIGI+

bacsom · December 8, 2018 at 7:06 PM

I have been using a Hifiberry digi+ card on my Rpi for years and it had been working correctly on Krypton, but not on Leia. My TV is not HDMI CEC compatible, but my Samsung home theater system is. With the volume control on my remote (T3 AirMouse) I could change the volume on my surround system on Krypton, but on the alpha builds of Leia it isn't working anymore. It only changes the volume of KODI and it doesn't send the signal to the unit. There is sound all right, but it would be nice if I didn't have to use two different remotes. Can anyone help me if it is the problem of KODI, or the OS, or this feature is no longer supported.

Thank you in advance!

**Da Flex** · December 8, 2018 at 8:22 PM Official Post

I don't know, if the Hifiberry driver is broken or not. Maybe using an HDMI splitter instead of Hifiberry could be a solution (if you can connect it with your Samsung receiver).

bacsom · December 9, 2018 at 11:05 AM

Thank you for your answer.

You mean, I should try out something like this? If nothing works I will consider it, but I don't really want to add an other power supply to my system. Do you think that it is a driver problem? Maybe I will write to Hifiberry then.

bacsom · December 9, 2018 at 12:33 PM

I have just got a lightning quick reply from Hifiberry. They says that it must be the application which send the signal.

**Da Flex** · December 9, 2018 at 12:37 PM Official Post

Quote from bacsom

You mean, I should try out something like this?

No, I mean an adapter, which has one HDMI input, and two HDMI outputs. But your adapter could be right, if you don't have a receiver with HDMI.

That Hifiberry shield is special RPi hardware. That's why I expect a driver problem. So, giving a kernel log may help to see, whether the driver has been loaded.

Quote

It uses the I2S sound port that connects directly to the CPU without the need for an additional USB conversion.

The I2S is the the keyword to search for in the kodi log. That means, there is no special Hifiberry driver.

Can you check your config.txt please? Those lines should be in it:

Code

dtoverlay=hifiberry-digi
dtdebug=1

**HiassofT** · December 9, 2018 at 2:14 PM

Do you get the volume change notification in Kodi when you press the volume buttons and does that change the level of the GUI sounds?

I just tried it here, on LE 8.90.009 and RPi3 plus a Hifiberry Digi and it worked fine. I also checked that it worked as expected while playing audio or a movie.

Note that volume changes won't have any effect when passtrhough is enabled, in this case the unaltered signal will be output.

so long,

Hias

bacsom · December 10, 2018 at 6:55 PM

Quote from HiassofT

Do you get the volume change notification in Kodi when you press the volume buttons and does that change the level of the GUI sounds?

I just tried it here, on LE 8.90.009 and RPi3 plus a Hifiberry Digi and it worked fine. I also checked that it worked as expected while playing audio or a movie.

Note that volume changes won't have any effect when passtrhough is enabled, in this case the unaltered signal will be output.

so long,

Thank you for your answer! Yes, I can see the volume change notification when I press the volume button, but it only has an effect, when I am in the menu. As you have said, It also appears when I am playing a movie, but then there is no effect at all and it remains at 100%. Besides this, the card itself works perfectly. My only problem is that now I have to use two remotes instead of one.

bacsom · December 10, 2018 at 7:09 PM

Quote from Da Flex
No, I mean an adapter, which has one HDMI input, and two HDMI outputs. But your adapter could be right, if you don't have a receiver with HDMI.

That Hifiberry shield is special RPi hardware. That's why I expect a driver problem. So, giving a kernel log may help to see, whether the driver has been loaded.

The I2S is the the keyword to search for in the kodi log. That means, there is no special Hifiberry driver.

Can you check your config.txt please? Those lines should be in it:
Code
dtoverlay=hifiberry-digi
dtdebug=1

Thank you for your answer!

Config.txt:I added dtdebug and I restarted my system.

"Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali kernel: snd-rpi-wm8804 soc:sound: wm8804-spdif <-> 3f203000.i2s mapping ok"

My logs:

http://ix.io/1vk0

**Da Flex** · December 12, 2018 at 7:40 AM Official Post

Quote from bacsom

My logs:

http://ix.io/1vk0

The I2S line looks good.

This lines of your log are a potential problem:

Code

Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali pulseaudio[265]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, but --disallow-module-loading not set.
Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali pulseaudio[265]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Home directory of user 'root' is not '/var/run/pulse', ignoring.
Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali pulseaudio[265]: W: [pulseaudio] caps.c: Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now, but that's impossible because PulseAudio was built without capabilities support.
Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali pulseaudio[265]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: OK, so you are running PA in system mode. Please make sure that you actually do want to do that.
Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali pulseaudio[265]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Please read http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/WhatIsWrongWithSystemWide/ for an explanation why system mode is usually a bad idea.
Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali pulseaudio[265]: W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/var/run/pulse/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory
Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali pulseaudio[265]: W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authentication key '/var/run/pulse/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory
Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali pulseaudio[265]: W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/var/run/pulse/.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory
Jun 22 13:11:51 KODI-Nappali pulseaudio[265]: W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authentication key '/var/run/pulse/.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory

I don't have those pulseaudio warnings in my kodi.log, but I don't have a Hifiberry shield.

Maybe user HiassofT can have a look at his log to verify whether the warnings are critical or not.

**HiassofT** · December 12, 2018 at 9:42 AM

The log shows that you are playing a movie with a DTS audio track and have DTS passtrhough enabled. So Kodi is transmitting the DTS stream as it is and the volume setting in kodi doesn't have any effect - this is what passthrough is meant to do so everything seems to be working as expected.

If you want multichannel audio output with volume control you have to use HDMI audio output and disable passthrough. Then kodi will decode the AC3/DTS streams, apply the volume setting and transmit multichannel PCM audio over HDMI.

so long,

Hias

bacsom · December 13, 2018 at 4:50 PM

Hi!

Thank you for checking my log. I can understand that, my question is that why I can change the volume of my home theatre system under Krypton and why not under Leia. Surely something is different. I don't know if the OS or KODI is the one, which is supposed to send the signal through SPDIF, but I have just checked and changing the volume still works even under the GUI on Krypton.

Could you check my old system's log?

http://ix.io/1vvn