The Beta Channel: what's cooking? Now at 4.019 (2021/11/13)

Audio Gear Talk RoPieee
21

Even when we explicitly set the “none” option? Shouldn’t it ignore volume control then?

[root@ropieeexl-office-headphones etc]# cat mpd.conf 
# Generated by RoPieee, DO NOT EDIT!

pid_file "/run/mpd/mpd.pid"
db_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db"
state_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpdstate"
playlist_directory "/var/lib/mpd/playlists"

audio_output {
   type "alsa"
   name "RoPieee ALSA Device"
   device "hw:0"
   mixer_type "none"
}
22

It should, but I think ‘ignore’ also means ‘do nothing’.
I also see, with BubbleUPNP, that the volume with this setting is 50, at least on the control side.

Weird.

23

@cwichura

I just found a post on the internet where there’s a mention that there is also a

mixer_type "disabled"

which means something different then ‘none’. Weird that I can’t find it in the documentation, but might be worth testing this.

24

I just tried manually changing it to “disabled”, did a systemctl restart on both mpd and upmpdcli. It’s still clearly doing something with volume, as when I drag the volume slider it goes from “barely audible” with the slider at max to completely mute with volume slider at min.

Tested again with Airplay, which is also set to volume disabled in RoPieeeXl, and I get proper max volume. And Roon, of course, works fine.

The DAC does not advertise ANY mixer to the system.

[root@ropieeexl-office-headphones ~]# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: xe [SPL Phonitor xe], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
[root@ropieeexl-office-headphones ~]# amixer
[root@ropieeexl-office-headphones ~]#

I just sent another feedback, in case it helps. I rand send-feedback from the command line, which doesn’t spit out the feedback ID number, it appears. But timestamp on uploads should be within a minute or two before this reply’s timestamp.

25

2.541 (2020/06/29)

  • make sure the configure is not hanging while running during startup
1 Like
26

2.542 (2020/06/30)

One thing only: enabling IPv6 (again).

We had problems in the past with underlying network stack, but that seems resolved now.

1 Like
27

2.543 (2020/07/01)

  • more IPv6 stuff
  • baby steps in hardware mixer support

The ‘baby’ steps mean that I’ve implemented the basic stuff and exposed this only in the DLNA/UPnP service.

How does it work?

There’s a white list of HAT’s (we’re only talking about HATs here) which are known for having hardware mixer support and the name of the mixer. If you have a HAT that’s in the whitelist you will see that you can select ‘hardware’ at the ‘Volume Control’ option for DLNA/UPnP. If not the option is greyed out.

So please test this. If you own a HAT that has hardware support but still the option remains greyed out it means it’s not in the whitelist and I need to add it. I’ve build something in the feedback option that probes for present mixer controls.

So let me know how this works!

1 Like
28

Harry, I noticed that the OpenHome in DLNA toggle stays on, despite setting to off and rebooting. Just FYI.

29

Thanks for spotting!

Fixed in the next beta release.

30

I also noticed that the beta unit doesn’t see itself on the device tab, and doesn’t show up in any of the other RoPieee device listings. Is this “as designed”?

31

One common gotcha that I see with IPv6 on RPi burn-to-card distributions is they end up with the same DUID because they don’t have a mechanism to clear the DUID file on first boot. This then causes problems when you have multiple systems deployed on the same network segment.

On my stable release there is nothing in /var/lib/dhcpd right now, but if you’ve been testing with ipv6 enabled on your build systems and then create an image out of that, it might end up dropping a common DUID file.

Just something to keep in mind.

32

2.544 (2020/07/03)

More (under da hood) work on hardware mixer support. Fixed the OpenHome issue.

1 Like
33

2.546 (2020/07/03)

More hardware mixer stuff:

  • more logic in the UI to make it clear that hardware mixer support only works for (some) HATs
  • hardware mixer support for shairport-sync!
  • improve software mixer settings for shairport-sync

Thanks

34

2.547 (2020/07/05)

Added hardware mixer support to Squeezelite.

35

The hardware mixer support in shairport seems to fix the airplay volume issue for me. (I use an Allo BOSS hat.) Yay! Thanks for working on this, Harry.

1 Like
36

2.548 (2020/07/09)

And the last one: hardware mixer support for Spotify.

37

Let’s hope no volume surprises for anyone.

38

2.549 (2020/07/11)

  • don’t use a different hostname for the wired connection when doing wireless
  • update Shairport-Sync
  • update Linux kernel
39

2.550 (2020/07/12)

  • fix dependancy problem when upgrading from gmrender to upmpdcli
  • don’t use ipstack for geo location

@Jochem_Herrmann I think that this version fixes your update-is-blocked issue.

40

2.552 (2020/07/15)

  • add support for power button and network led on the Pro-Ject Stream Box S2 Ultra