Libreelec, Hifiberry Dac+, Bluetooth A2DP

flexguse · December 9, 2016 at 7:21 PM

Hi everybody,

I use a Raspberry PI 2 together with the Hifiberry Dac+ as my main media player attached to the TV. A couple of days ago I bought a USB Bluetooth dongle because I would like to stream music from my mobile Android devices to the Raspberry. As this did not work in OpenElec I switched to LibreElec (more vivid development) and today I installed the latest Alpha.

I'm able to connect the mobile Android devices to LibreElec and music is shown in the mobile device as played, but the HifiBerry does not put any tone to the speakers.

I found a documentation in the Libreelec forum how to use PulseAudio (Pulseaudio - LibreELEC), but when I call

Code

pactl list short sinks

the Hifiberry is not listed.

I'm a little bit lost as there is lot of documentation in the internet, but nothing seems to work properly for me.

Has anybody managed to configure Libreelec on a Raspberry PI + Hifiberry Dac+ successfully to receive bluetooth audio via A2DP?

Any hint is appreciated,
Christoph

**lrusak** · December 9, 2016 at 9:54 PM Official Post

You need to load the pulseaudio udev-module first

Code

pactl load-module module-udev-detect

flexguse · December 10, 2016 at 12:32 PM

Hi Irusak,

thanks for your quick reply.

Here I give you what I did in my SSH console. A mobile device is paired and connected via bluetooth, in the LE Gui the mobile device is shown as connected, in the mobile device it is shown as connected also and I'm able to send music to the RaspPi.

Code

openELEC:~ # systemctl stop kodi
openELEC:~ # pactl load-module module-udev-detect
23
openELEC:~ # pactl list short sinks
1       alsa_output.platform-soc_sound.analog-stereo    module-alsa-card.c      s16le 2ch 44100Hz       SUSPENDED
openELEC:~ # pactl list short sources
5       bluez_source.E4_92_FB_4B_0F_78  module-bluez5-device.c  s16le 2ch 44100Hz       SUSPENDED
6       alsa_output.platform-soc_sound.analog-stereo.monitor    module-alsa-card.c      s16le 2ch 44100Hz       SUSPENDED
openELEC:~ # systemctl start kodi

As you can see the bluetooth is shown as music source, but in the sinks list my Hifiberry is not shown - and I do not want to use the onboard sound.

Cheers,
Christoph

**lrusak** · December 10, 2016 at 6:16 PM Official Post

Quote from flexguse
Hi Irusak,

thanks for your quick reply.

Here I give you what I did in my SSH console. A mobile device is paired and connected via bluetooth, in the LE Gui the mobile device is shown as connected, in the mobile device it is shown as connected also and I'm able to send music to the RaspPi.
Code
openELEC:~ # systemctl stop kodi
openELEC:~ # pactl load-module module-udev-detect
23
openELEC:~ # pactl list short sinks
1       alsa_output.platform-soc_sound.analog-stereo    module-alsa-card.c      s16le 2ch 44100Hz       SUSPENDED
openELEC:~ # pactl list short sources
5       bluez_source.E4_92_FB_4B_0F_78  module-bluez5-device.c  s16le 2ch 44100Hz       SUSPENDED
6       alsa_output.platform-soc_sound.analog-stereo.monitor    module-alsa-card.c      s16le 2ch 44100Hz       SUSPENDED
openELEC:~ # systemctl start kodi
As you can see the bluetooth is shown as music source, but in the sinks list my Hifiberry is not shown - and I do not want to use the onboard sound.

Cheers,
Christoph

Try stopping kodi before you do it otherwise it will hold onto the alsa sink

Code

systemctl stop kodi

flexguse · December 10, 2016 at 6:42 PM

Hi Irusak,

as you can see in my posted bash history stopping kodi was the first step.

I retried to get the Hifiberry as audio sink by:

stopping kodi using:
Code
```
systemctl stop kodi
```
checking if really no kodi process is running:
Code
```
ps -Alf | grep kodi
```
(no kodi process is running)
listing all audio sinks:
Code
```
pactl list short sinks
```

with result

Code

1 alsa_output.platform-soc_sound.analog-stereo module-alsa-card.c s16le 2ch 44100Hz SUSPENDED

Unfortunately stopping kodi did not the trick.

**lrusak** · December 10, 2016 at 7:32 PM Official Post

Does the hifiberry show up in alsa?

Code

aplay -l

Do you have you config.txt setup for the hifiberry?

flexguse · December 10, 2016 at 7:45 PM

Hi Irusak,

Code

openELEC:~ # aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: sndrpihifiberry [snd_rpi_hifiberry_dacplus], device 0: HiFiBerry DAC+ HiFi pcm512x-hifi-0
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Yes, the HiFiBerry shows up in alsa and works - apart from the bluetooth thing - completely as expected.

My /flash/config.txt file looks like this:

Code

################################################################################
#      This file is part of LibreELEC - https://libreelec.tv
#      Copyright (C) 2016 LibreELEC Team
#
#      Inspired and partly copied from:
#  http://tinyurl.com/gvx7v95 (C) 2009-2014 Stephan Raue
#  http://youresuchageek.blogspot.fr/2012/09/howto-raspberry-pi-openelec-on.html
#
#  LibreELEC is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
#  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#  the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or
#  (at your option) any later version.
#
#  LibreELEC is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#  GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#  along with LibreELEC.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
################################################################################
# Bootloader configuration - config.txt
################################################################################


################################################################################
# Memory (System/GPU configuration )
################################################################################


# default GPU memory split (do not change if you do not know what you are doing)
  gpu_mem=128


# SDRAM size based GPU memory split, uncomment and setup to override 'gpu_mem'
  gpu_mem_256=112
  gpu_mem_512=160
  gpu_mem_1024=256


################################################################################
# Overclocking settings
# WARNING: Do not change/enable if you do not know what you are doing!
#          The System may become unstable or you can have data corruption or
#          you can loose your warranty if you set wrong settings
#
# please read: http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt#Overclocking_configuration
################################################################################


# Overclock mode settings.
#
# default recommended values are: arm_freq | core_freq | sdram_freq | over_voltage
# no overclocking               :    700   |    250    |    400     |      0
# mode 'Modest'                 :    800   |    300    |    400     |      0
# mode 'Medium'                 :    900   |    333    |    450     |      2
# mode 'High'                   :    950   |    450    |    450     |      6
# mode 'Turbo'                  :   1000   |    500    |    600     |      6
# mode 'Pi2'                    :   1000   |    500    |    500     |      2


# arm_freq=700
# core_freq=250
# sdram_freq=400
# over_voltage=0


# set to 'force_turbo=1' to disable dynamic overclocking (you can lose your warranty!)
  force_turbo=0


# If you have any data corruption using Turbo Mode and overclocking
# try with this setting uncommented
# If this still fails, try to use Medium mode without "over_voltage=2"
# If it ultimately keeps failing, forget about this until it gets fixed
# Use a more conservative mode that will works fine in any cases:
# initial_turbo=30


################################################################################
# Overscan settings
################################################################################


# Make display smaller to stop text spilling off the screen
# see also http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=15700
# overscan_scale=1
# disable_overscan=1


# Adapt overscan values to your needs
# overscan_left=57
# overscan_right=59
# overscan_top=20
# overscan_bottom=20


################################################################################
# various settings see also: http://elinux.org/RPi_config.txt
################################################################################


# Force HDMI even if unplugged or powered off
# hdmi_force_hotplug=1


# Doesn't sent initial active source message.
# Avoids bringing CEC (enabled TV) out of standby and channel switch when
# rebooting.
  hdmi_ignore_cec_init=1


################################################################################
# License keys to enable GPU hardware decoding for various codecs
# to obtain keys visit the shop at http://www.raspberrypi.com
################################################################################


# decode_MPG2=0x00000000
# decode_WVC1=0x00000000
# decode_DTS=0x00000000
# decode_DDP=0x00000000


################################################################################
# End of default configuration
# all values below this line were inserted from config.txt.bk (your old config)
# and can be merged with the above values
################################################################################


# HIFI Berry configuration
dtoverlay=hifiberry-dacplus
dtdebug=1

Display More

I only added the device tree overlay configuration. The difference to the LibreElec documentation is the enabled debugging which comes from the HiFiBerry documentation.

I removed the debug option but this did not change anything.

flexguse · December 20, 2016 at 7:34 PM

Hi everybody,

I think I fixed my problem.

It turned out my device

Code

alsa_output.platform-soc_sound.analog-stereo

was not the on-board sound, but the Hifiberry.

If you use something like

Code

pactl list

you get more information about your sound devices.

By accident I checked sound is played properly after loading the modules using

Code

pactl load-module module-udev-detect

As I don't want to load the modules manually, I put the load command into /storage/.config/autostart.sh.

As the last step I had to choose "Bluetooth" as the default audio device in Libreelec. With this setting I'm now able to stream audio from a mobile device via A2DP and have LE played another sound at the same time.

Hope this helps,
Christoph