DietPi: creating a lean-and-mean Roon Bridge

Audio Gear Talk DietPi
41

Hi,

I’m considering to put together one of such set for Roon RAAT

Screen Shot 2016-10-29 at 1.09.45 .png1638×1004 184 KB
Screen Shot 2016-10-29 at 1.41.26 .png820×1120 169 KB
endpoint based on AUDIOPHONICS I-Sabre V3 DAC ES9023:
http://www.audiophonics.fr/en/diy-dac/audiophonics-i-sabre-dac-es9023-v2-tcxo-raspberry-pi-20-a-b-i2s-p-10657.html

How do you think?

  1. Will DietPi and RoonBridge support this DAC (I don’t see it listed in your screen shots)?
  2. Can DietPi and RoonBridge benefit from Button on/off power management and put Roon played track information on the screen?

I have in consideration tow configurations:

  • one with screen
  • one without (might be more simple to set-up as no need to integrate it with Roon Bridge playback)

Janis

42

  1. Since Audiophonics is using the basic ‘hifiberry-dac’ overlay to get things started, my guess is you won’t have any problems here (just select the HifiBerry DAC in DietPi)

  2. I think the power button will work just fine (and if I’m not mistaken, it’s scriptable as well, so you can mould it to your specific needs). That being said, given the (very) low power profile of the Pi, I just leave mine on all the time. They’ve been rock solid and are instantly ready for duty.

Roon Bridge will not be able to take advantage of the screen (yet). Perhaps the upcoming Roon API will be able to assist here, but that’s just speculating. I don’t particularly care for screens anyway, but YMMV.

It looks like a very nice piece of kit. Be sure to let us know your experiences if you decide to go for it! :slight_smile:

1 Like
43

Thanks for this guide, and also for the other on setting up Roon Bridge. I was able to get Roon going on an RPi3 with HifiBerry Digi+ Pro, and it’s working great.

One question - is there a way to set it up so that “Use Device Controls” for volume in audio setup will change volume directly in ALSA? Possibly related - I installed alsa-utils, but when I run alsamixer by SSH there are no options for volume control.

Mostly I’m just curious if everything is working the way it should. I understand that I can get volume control from Roon by choosing “DSP Volume” in audio setup.

44

Thank you Rene!
Audiophonics RaspDac arriving, will report progress.

1 Like
45

The hardware volume control of the Hifiberry is the ‘Digital’ mixer. When using Device Controls in Roon, this is the mixer that is manipulated.

You can verify in alsamixer or amixer – or manipulate the control directly and see the volume change in Roon. :slight_smile:

46

Sorry, I should have been more clear.

ALSA shows no volume controls in the mixer, and setting volume to Device Controls in Roon results in a “volume is fixed” message when trying to adjust the volume.

I installed DietPi, the only config changes were to enable WiFi, choose Digi+ as soundcard, and install ALSA (using DietPi software installer). Trying to launch alsamixer initially gives an error.

1-alsa-invalid.JPG717×626 63.6 KB

Changing /etc/asound.conf as follows (as per HifiBerry website) removes error…

2-asound.JPG717×626 24.8 KB

…and when alsamixer launches, this is all I see. No volume controls, etc. Just “Tx Source”, which can be set to “AIF” or “S/PDIF RX”.

3-alsamixer.JPG741×578 35.7 KB

If AIF is selected as the output, I get music playing from Roon Bridge. S/PDIF RX as output results in no sound.

47

Just summarized my question here for HifiBerry support in an email and received the following response (about 3 minutes later!). Figured I would include it here in case anyone else is confused.

there is no ALSA volume control. The HiFiBerry Digi+ works bit-perfect- Therefore it outputs the data without touching them.

I’d be curious to know if others with Digi+ (not DAC+ or AMP+) see the same thing as I do in alsamixer.

48

And sorry – I should have read better. :slight_smile:

I thought this was about a DAC+ – the Digi+ boards do not have any mixer controls, as they output the full, bit perfect signal only. If you need volume control in Roon, you will need to use the DSP functionality (which is as good as its gets with 24-bit dithering). The alsamixer screen is as it’s supposed to be.

49

Excellent, thanks!

50

Can someone remind me the usr you ssh into? Is it still pi@?
Been a while since I did it and need to check something. If it’s pi, I’ve clearly forgotten my password! Doh.

51

It’s root :slight_smile:

52

Off topic, but after more than 20 years using Linux I finally fell prey to not backing up config files when working as root. I ran lsblk > instead of >> pointing to /etc/fstab :cold_sweat:

53

I wanted to press ‘like’, but it somehow feels inappropriate… :slight_smile:

2 Likes
54

Thanks. Ok, now to see if I remember password. Can you remind me default one? :slight_smile:

One thing I noticed just rebooting them is the Jessie one remembered previous volume, whereas the diet pi defaulted to 100%. Caught out and in trouble again. I guess that’s because it doesn’t write to sd card?

1 Like
55

dietpi

As for the volume setting – DietPi only logs to RAM – alsa settings are stored locally. Mine are saved perfectly fine over reboots.

56

Thanks.
Mmm interesting. So did you manually set a default volume? If not I wonder why the Jessie one saved its volunevbut the Dietpi didn’t? Maybe it’s hat related. Dietpi is iqaudio, Jessie is hifiberry.

57

Steve - sorry for the off topic message, but if you’re still considering selling your Facts I’d be interested in having a chat (PM sent on wigwam - but noticed you haven’t been on there in a while)
Thanks
Giles

58

Hi Giles. They have messaging here too - just click user name and you’ll see the message button. Will follow up there. Cheers.

59

Hi Giles,

You may have had issues PM’ing @hifi_swlon. Should be ok now.

Cheers, Greg

60

Greg,

Thanks for the help, for some reason earlier the ‘message’ button wasn’t appearing.
But it all looks good now.

Giles

1 Like