Audio issue after upgrading from RetroPie 4.5.1 to 4.7.1

[aldweb]

Hello,

I bought an early version of the Picade by Piromoni back in December 2015.
After many years without an issue, I thought that it was time to upgrade to the latest RetroPie version, as the legacy Raspbian Stretch is no more maintained.
Everything went smoothly except for one single issue which took me quite some time to solve: my RetroPie setup delivered no sound anymore!

I carefully checked the dedicated page in the great RetroPie documentation (https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Sound-Issues/) as well as other forum posts before writing down here. They did not really help.

To make sure that sound would output in my Raspberry Pi 2, here is what I did, all in a console session.

1. Added a few lines in the config.txt file (to minimize the speakers dither and to make sure that the hdmi required for the display is launched early at boot time)
   sudo nano /boot/config.txt
   hdmi_force_hotplug=1
   disable_audio_dither=1

2. Replaced .asoundrc content
   nano /home/pi/.asoundrc
   defaults.pcm.card 1
   defaults.ctl.card 1
   sudo reboot
   ->This makes sure that the headphone will be the default sound output device.

3. Check that headphone is the default device, and that I can manage volume
   alsamixer
   -> Success.

4. Check that sound outputs correctly with a speaker directly connected to the headphone
   omxplayer -o local /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/indo.mp3
   omxplayer -o alsa /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/indo.mp3
   -> Both local (headphones) and alsa (alsa driver) output the mp3 file in the speaker, success.

5. Plug back the jack plug to the Picade blue hat
   omxplayer -o local /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/indo.mp3
   omxplayer -o alsa /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/indo.mp3
   aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
   -> Music plays with all three commands, and sound outputs correctly through the Picade speakers, success.
   So, the Picade hat seems to work correctly, as expected.

6. Now, back to RetroPie and its Emulationstation user interface, here are the options which worked for my setup:
   AUDIO CARD - DEFAULT
   AUDIO DEVICE - HEADPHONE
   OMX PLAYER AUDIO DEVICE - ALSA

This fix and settings might help other people in upgrading these early Picade/RPi2 (or 3) versions to the latest Raspbian Buster based RetroPie.

Cheers,
aldweb