Dummies Guide to Pi2AES! Throw away your PC or laptop.

I stream Qobuz through Pi2AES using Roon/Ropieee. All is great. Then I tried to plug a thumb drive into the Pi to play some CD's i burned onto it (and it has photos on it, in case somehow that matters) and all of a sudden, can't stream QoBuz. Pi lost connection to the DAC - and I couldn't play Roon thru the System Output (my laptop). So I unplugged electricity, removed the thumb drive, and rebooted. Everything was fine. So I am guessing Pi didn't like me sticking the thumb drive into it somehow, although I know this is doable.

Is there something I need to do, like boot up in some kind of sequence, to add the thumb drive into the Pi? I have looked all over to try to see how to do this, can't find anything. I assume its simple (but I am not sure how to identify the thumb drive on Roon, but I figure that's more-or-less straight forward) but I am just not able to find any doc re this...

Thx..

 

What happens if you boot with the thumb drive already inserted?

 

If you are using Pi3b and Wireless, it could be that the wlan is using the same bus as the USB and can't maintain proper operational bandwidth to stream Qobuz.

 

I hadn't tired it (I got kinda spooked when it wouldn't play because I had a lot of issues with Volumio where i had to replace several SD cards) but after your prompt, I did and it streams Qobuz just fine. So it seems need to boot with the thumb drive inserted. Thx.

Now... how to get Roon to use the thumb drive as the input? No clue, but I haven't looked a lot to figure this out.

 

I have Pi4... and it seems to work fine if I boot with thumb drive inserted when it boots up...

 

I thought I'd jump in here and explain the resolution of the problems I was having with my setup using Volumio.
The problem was, um ...... ME. Michael posted a reply in another thread here about being sure to properly shut down the Pi using the software.

I had just been powering it down without using the 'Shutdown' feature on Volumio. (Insert facepalm here.) Since I have been treating the Pi like a 'real' computer, I've not experienced any more glitches.

Thanks Michael for being patient with me and for the wake up post.

 

That's one of the advantages of piCorePlayer. Everything runs in RAM and there are no writes to the SD card, except when you save the configuration. So there are no issues with hard power downs.

 

My equipment remains Rasp4 with Pi2Design AES. A BNC cable connects to a DacMagic. Running Volumio 2.779. Local files and Spotify play correctly using General Playback Options: Output Device = Allo DigiOne, I2S DAC = on, Dac Model = Allo DigiOne.

I would like to try the DSP for Volumio plugin. As far as I can tell, the install went fine. When activated, no sound is outputed. There is a persistent error "Failed to open alsa". SSH into alsamixer shows the volume control xxxx over.

Is there a solution for this or is the plugin incompatible? As always thanks for the newbie help.

 

With Volumio the key is reset, reset and reset again. For some reason Volumio (and to a lesser degree any player based on MDP) does not seem to keep its changes when you make them. So reset, reboot, make the change again and reset again! Rinse and repeat.

 

After more than 10 Save and Restarts, I can say that the notice at the top of the settings page says that there is no Allo DigiOne. The Output Device settings automatically revert to "Audio Jack" and ID2 = off. There is a repeat of the alsa device failure notice each time. By "reset" did you mean "save" or is there a reset dialog somewhere?

 

Make the change, save it, power down then cycle power. In my experience this is where you may have to do it more than once or twice. You can also try setting the driver to “HifiBerry Digi+ pro“ as that is the setting we use.

 

Thank you Michael. I made the assumption that a Volumio Restart was sufficient. So Full Shutdown is the new plan.

 

So, using the Hifiberry Digi + Pro device name, ID2 on, "save", noted that there is a prompt that says the player has been updated, then select shutdown, wait for it to do so, unplug for 30 seconds. Repower go to Settings Playback and it has automatically reset itself to "audio Jack". I have done this sequence 8 times with exactly the same result. Is there some simple, trivial item that I may be missing? I have disabled the plugin and selected Play. Music plays properly.

 

Are you using a pi 3 or a pi 4?

 

Pi 4. Since the last post, I have uninstalled the DSP plugin and then installed the Volumio parametric equalizer. Went through the 6 restarts as above. no joy. The error message stays the same for all of my attempts, failed to open alsa.... My googleing skills on that error message hasn't yielded anything I can understand.

 

it is starting to look like it might be a failure of our board. Have you tried any other player software? Something that you can use to verify the PI2AES itself.

 

Yes, For about 2 weeks or so I ran Moode audio. Some beginner mistakes on my part but when sorted Moode worked fine. I used the HiFiBerry Digi + Pro device name. I did not try to use any sort of EQ plugin like I did in Volumio. If there is a specific app/player that would yield some useful information, I will be happy to give it a go.

An item that I forgot to mention is that through the numerous shutdown/reboots I would hear the little intro music as Volumio started up.

 

FYI, I get the tune when my Pi4 boots up with Volumio closed. I think that sound is from the Pi, not Volumio.

 

Awesome news! I was kind of hesitant to get on board with the issues you were having and knowing how good you are with problem solving. Hope you are doing safe and well out there. Let us know if you need anything from the local crew.

 

OK. I couldn't remember if the opening sound was there with Moode Audio so I mentioned it in case it was a clue.