Allo USBridge board

@Anders_Strengberg Hi ! I’m not sure what the solution is. I faced the same problem upgrading to v157. Did you install the intermediate v156 with the Allo GUI ?

I finally installed v156 With Allo GUI on a micro sd card and then upgraded to v156 from the GUI.

@Gurpreet_Kohli
I haven’t updated my to v.157 does I think maybe I have done it! But I’m not sure, so I can still have v.156!
I have to check it!
But how does I get into the Allo GUI?

@Dan_Knight

I also tried to generate the problem - i first played YouTube through Shairport and it played fine. This was upon starting up the system. Then i ran dietpi-bugreport.

Reference CODE: ad52fc1d-2319-4a39-bf73-68531be6ac74-0

Then, i stopped YouTube and went over to Tidal app on my iphone and selected a song to play. The song hung and nothing played on Shairport.
Then i went back to Youtube and selected a video to play - it started playing, but no audio !

Then i ran dietpi-bugreport again. All this while Youtube was playing on my Iphone (iOS 10 btw) while no audio could be heard from the DAC (Chord Mojo). Shairport was set at 32 bits, 44100 bit rate. The second reference code is given below:

Reference CODE: ad52fc1d-2319-4a39-bf73-68531be6ac74-1

Hope you can figure out why the audio stops playing while the song/video keeps progressing in YouTube while playing through Shairport.

I don’t think you can get Allo GUI till you upgrade to V157 unless you moved to the V156-Allo GUI by flashing the image manually.

So, please update to v157 first.

Well @Gurpreet_Kohli I updated to version 157 and now is DietPi disappeared :joy:!!!
So it’s not possible to play music with Air Play to my USBridge!!!
The Allo USBridge works perfectly and sounds great, to play up music from Roon to my two DAC’s.
And I can play the same music with iPeng 9 and the app music player, that is needed to buy inside! To my iPhone and iPad and it’s great :+1:.
But, I don’t think that I’m going to update it to any more versions!!!
So something else doesn’t work :grinning:.
By the way I don’t get into the Allo GUI anyway!!!

So if @Dan_Knight and @allo.com
Can please help me out, so I can get back the DietPi Air Play Back so am I satisfied!!! And please don’t ask me for anything about, how my Shairport etc…looks like or something else like that it’s says, if I’m doing something!!!
Because I have absolutely no idea how DietPi works.

Best
Anders

Hey everyone,

I recently picked up a USBridge from a fellow Roon member, and I have it running into an ifi iDSD Nano LE at the moment. I’m having a strange issue. When I run the DAC into one of the USB ports on the Sparky itself, I have the option to upsample to 384 or DSD128. But if I plug it straight into the USBridge board, I get the following screen. Any guesses as to what’s going on? Thanks.

25 PM

Hi @Rob
I also get the same results from Sparky, as you! I have made the USB port clean with help from Entreq, so I can use both the clean USBridge USB port and now clean USB ports from Sparky! So it’s not strange that you get it out from Sparky, but you shall get the same results directly from the USBridge!
Are you feeding both with power? I only feed the USBridge and it’s works perfectly! You have to get in touch with @Dan_Knight or @allo.com they can help you with this.

Good luck :+1:.

1 Like

Thank you, Anders, for the advice and for flagging Allo and Dan. I’m only powering the USBridge.

Hi

seems you have a faulty unit that plays only at low speed on USB. Contact us and we will exchange it to a brand new one thats fully tested and working.

1 Like

Thanks Johan! I’ve sent a message through the contact form on the @allo.com site.

Hi Anders,

The recent updates will reset Shairport/Squeezelite to 16 bit depth output (due to full re-installs of pre-req software). If I remember correctly, your DAC requires 32bit output.

Please can you verify your running 32bit output for Shairport-sync?

Hi Dan,
I should receive a new eMMC DietPi/Allo GUI from Allo! But it’s seems to be a eMMC with DietPI GUI version 156!
So I don’t have the Allo GUI!
How does I check the Shairport-sync?
When instead?

Hi Anders,

You can upgrade in the web interface:

  • System Settings
  • Update DietPi

DietPi will check for updates daily and during boot, so if its not showing update in GUI, a reboot would allow for update button to appear.

Hi @Gurpreet_Kohli
You are using Allo WiFi dongle.
I have bought it for using it to the Allo Boss player/dac!
But I don’t get it to connect with my network?
Did you only put it one of the USBridge USB ports or?
Because it’s saying that it’s have a cd with the installation etc…
But the USBridge and the Boss has any cd drive, so how shall I do?
The dongle has a WPS connection under and I have tried to klick on it and the WPS on my Router, but it’s not connected it’s only one blue light what blink!

Best Anders

Hi,

Apologies for delay.

I’ve identified a possible issue in dmesg related to the USBbridge/DAC, i’ll pass this over to Allo for investigation.

If you can answer the following question, i’d be grateful:

  • Have you ever experienced “loss of playback” with other software (eg: Roon)?
  • When the “loss of playback” occurs, can you try restarting the shairport-sync service to see if it resolves ? systemctl restart shairport-sync
  • Have you experienced “loss of playback” with shairport-sync, using another USB DAC (if available)?

Hi Anders

cd is for windows. RPI has the drivers already. Power the boss player with the WIFI dongle in the USB port. Do you see a Volumio wifi connection on your phone ?

Hi Anders,

I have no experience with the RPI-Boss DAC combo.

On USBridge, i use the USB 3.0 port on Sparky to connect the wifi dongle. I did not try WPS and just configured it in Dietpi manually.

If you are using Dietpi v157, then this might help.

  • You will have to uninstall the wifi hotspot mode first. This interferes with the wifi dongle somehow.
  • You can go to the command line and type - dietpi-software uninstall 60
  • Then reboot

You now have to go into Dietpi-config and setup your wifi dongle.

This worked for me. Maybe your problem is different.

@Dan_Knight - Anything else you can suggest?

Dear Dan,

I do not face any issues with Roon. I do keep Roon, Shairport, GMrender active on the GUI page.

A few times Shairport has lost audio while a Youtube video was playing. When this happens, if i try to switch a track on Roon, it does give an error - transport not found. This might be as the DAC is linked to Shairport exclusively.

I have tried restarting Shairport, but it doesn’t work.

What works is that i unselect USBridge and switch over to my phone for playback and then reselect USBridge back again as an Airplay device. Like making a fresh connection i guess. Sometimes, i have to repeat these steps twice and i get the audio back.

I don’t have another USB DAC. The problem has started when i moved to v157. So, it must be the Shairport update. Is there a way to go back to the older Shairport version that was on v156?

Hi,

The current version is latest stable:

root@DietPi:~# shairport-sync -V
3.1.3-OpenSSL-Avahi-ALSA-soxr-metadata-sysconfdir:/usr/local/etc

The previous version is 3.0.2, you can download and install it for testing purposes with (copy paste all into term):

wget http://dietpi.com/downloads/binaries/all/shairport-sync_3.0.2_armv7.deb -O package.deb
dpkg -i package.deb
rm package.deb

#apply config:
cat << _EOF_ >  /usr/local/etc/shairport-sync.conf
general =
{
  name = "%H";
  interpolation = "soxr";
};

metadata =
{
	enabled = "yes";
	include_cover_art = "no";
	pipe_name = "/tmp/shairport-sync-metadata";
	pipe_timeout = 5000;
	socket_address = "226.0.0.1";
	socket_port = 5555;
	socket_msglength = 65000;
};


alsa =
{
//  mixer_control_name = "PCM";
//  output_rate = 44100; // can be 44100, 88200, 176400 or 352800
//  output_format = "S16"; // can be "U8", "S8", "S16", "S24", "S24_3LE", "S24_3BE" or "S32"
};
_EOF_

#Restart services
dietpi-services restart

Thats spot on, dietpi-software uninstall 60 will remove the WiFi hotspot from system, returning WiFi to standard connection.
It can then be setup in dietpi-config > Networking > WiFi