Raspberry Pi 4 - USB Audio - Weird issue

  • Hello,

    fist thank you for this fast, lightweight and optimized KODI distro! I switched to LibreELEC from Raspbian (Raspberry OS) and I have this weird issue with my "Bose USB Audio" connected to the Raspberry under LibreELEC in KODI. Without any change, sometimes is the sound heard from the speakers, sometimes not. All you have to do is press "restart" or power it "on/off", it's like russian roulette, once it works, the second time it doesn't :D

    I had this issue also under Raspbian, but it helped me to disable the onboard audio chip:
    https://superuser.com/a/1045885/491553

    And this works one year under Raspbian like a charm. Before, I tried to set up the device correctly in ALSA, but nothing works except disabling the onboard audio chip mentioned above. I tried the same in LibreELEC:

    Code
    echo "blacklist snd_bcm2835" > /storage/.config/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

    but with no success, nothing change and the PI:XY sound card donť disappear.

    Here is my log:

    http://ix.io/2I1T

    And some screenshots:

    Can anyone please help me fix this issue under LibreELEC? :)

  • I would also try to stop / start Kodi again after boot / power on to check if it helps (in this case adding some delay at Kodi startup could be the solution):

    systemctl stop kodi

    systemctl start kodi

  • Hello guys,

    thank you for your answers. To the ghtester recommendation, unfortunately this will not help at all. When the sound is not heard, stop / start kodi will not help :( To the Da Flex recommendation, using the 3.0 USB port is not 100%, but significantly increased the "success" rate, mostly on "cold" start :)

    Edited once, last by TomasValenta (December 21, 2020 at 2:14 PM).

  • OK, so what if you try to unload the module:

    modprobe -r snd_bcm2835

    or

    rmmod snd_bcm2835

    Or comment out by # this line in /flash/config.txt:

    dtparam=audio=on

    Edited 5 times, last by ghtester (December 21, 2020 at 2:58 PM).

  • and edited /flash/config.txt (after LibreElec restart):

    but nothing changed, the sound issue is still here and PI:audio devices are still listed :(

  • To the Da Flex recommendation, using the 3.0 USB port is not 100%, but significantly increased the "success" rate, mostly on "cold" start :)

    I think that's a proof of my theory, so data rate is the problem, not a wrongly loaded audio driver.

    My suggestion: Take another microSD and try this audio-optimized LE version. Chances are that it can handle your high audio data rate better than the stable LE.

  • Pulse audio Raspberry Os

    I think that's a proof of my theory, so data rate is the problem, not a wrongly loaded audio driver.

    My suggestion: Take another microSD and try this audio-optimized LE version. Chances are that it can handle your high audio data rate better than the stable LE.

    I tried the suggested version today (specifically this build LibreELEC-RPi4.arm-9.80-nightly-20201230-c9e96e6.img.gz), but the audio behavior is the same. The interesting thing in both cases it that on cold boot (power up) audio works in most cases, but after reboot in the most of cases the audio does not work :/

    Recently, when the Raspberry Os changed the sound backend from ALSA to PulseAudio, it was no longer necessary to turn off the internal sound card and everything works out of the box, even when powering the usb audio on while the OS is already running. Is there any plan to switch from ALSA to PulseAudio also in the LibreELEC in the future? 8)