Pi-DAC+ as an HQP NAA

Hi Eric,

Any chance of running me through how your getting HQP to see the iqaudio dac+

Many thanks

Wayne

Hey @Wayne_Bull1 – I set up @EricG’s NAA for him. There’s a little bit of DIY handiwork involved, but nothing too complex. This is the way I usually do it:

  1. Install Raspbian – I use UA-Netinstall, which gives a nice, small and up-to-date install of Raspbian/Debian Jessie. Just flash the micro-image from the link above to an SD card, boot up your Pi and let it download/config automatically for ~15 mins.
  2. Login and install alsa-utils and libasound2: ‘apt-get install alsa-utils libasound2’
  3. Disable the Pi’s onboard sound drivers by commenting-out / removing the entry ‘snd_bcm2835’ from /etc/modules (nano /etc/modules)
  4. Add the PiDAC+ to the device tree: edit /boot/config.txt and add the line ‘dtoverlay=iqaudio-dacplus’ (nano /boot/config.txt)
  5. Reboot and verify that the PiDAC+ is seen by Alsa: ‘aplay -l’
  6. To be able to use the latest NAA service from Jussi, you will need to upgrade to Debian Stretch: edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change all ‘jessie’ entries to ‘stretch’ (nano /etc/apt/sources.list). Upgrade by typing ‘apt-get update && apt-get upgrade’. Make sure all packages are included; if any are left alone, copy the list of these packages and issue ‘apt-get install (paste package list here)’
  7. Reboot
  8. Download the latest and greatest NAA package: ‘wget https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/naa/v3/stretch/networkaudiod_3.1.1-27_armhf.deb’
  9. Install the package: ‘dpkg -i networkaudiod_3.1.1-27_armhf.deb’
  10. Reboot and verify that the networkaudiod.service is running by typing ’systemctl status networkaudiod.service’
  11. If it is failing, this is probably because your Pi is trying to load the service while network and/or sound have not been fully initialised. You can prevent this by editing networkaudio’s config file: ‘nano /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/networkaudiod.service’. Add a new line in the [Unit] section, after ‘Requires=
’: ‘After=network-online.target sound.target’
  12. Reboot and re-verify that the service is running: ‘systemctl status networkaudiod.service’
  13. Select your NAA in HQP, pour a glass with a liquid of your preference and listen to some sweet upsampled goodness.
2 Likes

@Wayne_Bull1 What he says
 :smile:

Thanks Rene and Eric,

I’ll give it a go and hope for the best with my limited linux skills :scream:

Limited sounds like better than my skills @Wayne_Bull1
I just sat back in awe, and watched code roll over the screen, untill I heard:
“This should work!” And it did


lol, yes i’m very reliant on the skills of people like @RBM for foolproof instructions.

Step 13 is the most important – can’t go wrong with that one
 :wink:

1 Like

Rene, is it normal to see no activity on the ethernet led’s on first boot?

Im doing this without a monitor and then through putty once networked

Nope, you should see ethernet and sd card lights while netinstall is doing its thing. Can you ping the unit?

I can see the unit. I think I’ve messed up the SD card write.

Is the file written as a image file or zip extraction?

Just download raspbian-ua-netinst-v1.0.8.1.img.bz2 and unpack – you’ll end up with an .img file that can be written to SD the usual way.

Thanks Rene,

I now have have lights on SD and ethernet.

That’s step 1 out of the way
only 12 to go lol

I found an easier way. Jussi provides complete images for NAA on the pi, look here, burn that to an sd card. Theses images are smaller and only contain what Jussi thinks are necessary.

Stick the card in a card reader attach to PC or Mac in my case, find the config.txt file on the line after the
“Hash sign and Additional overlays”, I added the following

dtoverlay=iqaudio-dacplus
dtoverlay=i2s-mmap

I then copied the "iqaudio-dacplus-overlay.dtb file (obtained from Gordon’s Roon image), to the overlays folder on the sd card and made sure the i2s-mmap-overlay was also present.

Stuck the card in the pi, booted it up and HQPlayer found the pi NAA straight away

2 Likes

Smart, but not nearly as much fun
 :wink:

I have better experiences with ‘roll your own’ images than with Jussi’s when using USB, but that may not apply to the PiDAC. The iqaudio-dacplus overlay is present in the Signalyst image by default; i2s-mmap however is not and needs to be carried over from Gordon’s image.

Rene,

With step 3, how do I get to that folder to edit out the line, using Putty?

Cheers

As it says: nano /etc/modules

You may need to install nano first: apt-get nano :slight_smile:

Paul,

Cant find Additional Overlays anywhere in the config.txt file?

Rene,

Sorry to be a pain. I’m having trouble installing step 9. This is the error I get.

root@pi:~# dpkg -i networkaudiod_3.1.1-27_armhf.deb
(Reading database 
 12651 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack networkaudiod_3.1.1-27_armhf.deb 

Unpacking networkaudiod (3.1.1-27) over (3.1.1-27) 

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of networkaudiod:
networkaudiod depends on libstdc++6 (>= 5.2); however:
Version of libstdc++6:armhf on system is 4.9.2-10.

dpkg: error processing package networkaudiod (–install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
networkaudiod

Wayne
In which case just add it at the end of the file, but don’t forget the hash symbol first to indicate that the words “additional overlays” are just a comment.
Paul

Ok Paul, gotcha.

I’ll give it a whirl.

Thanks