Picade volume stuck at high

Talljayne

I seem to have the same issue as others but I can’t see a solution. I’m running the Picade hat on a RPi 3 with a downloaded version of retropie that I have run upgrade and update until no further updates found. The Picade installer was run using CURL. All works fine except the volume is WAY TOO LOUD!

The volume control in retropie seems to be at zero. When I go into the config menu for audio it states mixer elements not found.

I’m no RPi nor Linux expert and so please go easy… does anyone have a simple solution to this? TIA

mitu

@talljayne said in Picade volume stuck at high:

The volume control in retropie seems to be at zero. When I go into the config menu for audio it states mixer elements not found.

That's because the Picade audio hat doesn't have a hardware mixer, so there's no volume control available.
You can add a software mixer through ALSA's configuration file ($HOME/.asoundrc) - see more details here.

SignedUp

@mitu Thanks for the pointer, and troubleshooting in the related thread (https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/31479/picade-sound-stuck-at-max-volume/23?_=1649945272067)

Following the instructions to add a new software mixer via .asoundrc worked with the hifiberry_dac that's included in the Picade X hat. It was then a case of updating the Audio Device in Emulation Station to the newly created one from .asoundrc, Master in my case.

I now have a volume setting that works on a fresh install of Retropie 4.8 with the Picade!

james.milroy

@SignedUp , I am having this exact problem myself. I couldn't update my current setup (which was working) because Retropie is now using a newer version of Raspian. I downloaded the 4.8 image and set about installing it and thats when I found out about the no sound issue with the Picade X HAT. I've been tearing my hair out trying to sort this but I'm no linux expert. Could you post what changes you have made to your setup to get the sound working. It would be greatly appreciated.

SignedUp

@james-milroy sorry for the late reply, haven't logged in for a while.
I mentioned a few more steps on the Pimoroni forum for the Picade if that helps. It's basically a case of following the steps to add a new softvol device, that you can then select as the audio device in Emulation Station.
https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picade-x-hat-sound-volume-too-high/13874/50?u=signup

Hopefully the PImoroni folks can update their install script to handle this for everyone in the future. That was my suggestion on the Github bug:
https://github.com/pimoroni/picade-hat/issues/38

james.milroy

@SignedUp , thanks for this, i've been tinkering but was getting bogged down trying to edit files that didn't exist on my setup. This makes it a lot clearer so I should be able to sort it out now. What you said is correct, if Pimoroni or someone capable was to update the installer script then this would be done automatically.

Cheers, James

james.milroy

@SignedUp , I'm getting nowhere fast. Any chance you could post your .asoundrc and asound.conf files to see where i'm going wrong. It would be much appreciated!

SignedUp

@james-milroy apologies again the delayed response, been a bit snowed under with work. At the weekend I finally found time to have a play and document it this time.

I thought I would try and start again, and document the process, and rather maddeningly sound worked with less fiddling. Here is the process I went through, my setup:

Picade 10”, using the USB-C Picade X HAT on a Raspberry Pi 4B 4GB
standard setup where a simple speaker in the Picade case is connected to the Picade X HAT via the 2-wire speaker connector on that HAT
In case it matters I have the USB power for the screen in the top USB 3 port
I also have all my ROMs on a USB stick in the bottom USB 3 port – which made starting from scratch a lot easier.

Using Raspberry Pi Imager I installed RetroPie 4.8 (RPI 4/400) image on a 32GB micro-SD card.
The Picade booted up this clean image fine, and the 10" display worked straight away (no commenting out HDMI lines in config.txt required).
After the initial storage resize reboot, it was at the Emulation Station configure input screen.
Using a USB keyboard, F4 to drop to the command line and run the Pimoroni Picade X HAT install script:
curl https://get.pimoroni.com/picadehat | bash
Then sudo reboot
This then finished in Emulation Station showing a black screen when the reboot finished.
Blindly press F4 again to drop to the command line and re-comment out the hdmi_force_hotplug=1 line in config.txt, then reboot again.
This time the Emulation Station screen showed correctly after the reboot – something must have changed as my Picade used to need that HDMI hotplug line enabled.
Sound is not working at this point, but feel free to configure the joystick and buttons now in Emulation Station.
If you were to run alsamixer from the command prompt you would see the familiar error about the hifiberry_dac soundcard not having a mixer, and no volume control being available.
Instead, just start an emulator from Emulation Station by selecting a game.
Sound now starts, at a painful 100% level.
Drop back to Emulation Station.
Open the menu and set the sound settings to:

Volume: 40% or your preference
Audio Card: Default
Audio Device: PCM
OMX Player Audio Device: ALSA

Audio now works, and the volume persists over reboots etc. Dropping to command prompt and alsamixer shows a PCM volume control. Basically it’s working, and I can’t work out why it wasn’t working previously and why I had to fiddle with .asoundrc etc.

Again, in case it matters, the bootloader and eeprom on my Pi is up-to-date for default branch:

   CURRENT: Tue 25 Jan 14:30:41 UTC 2022 (1643121041)
    LATEST: Tue 25 Jan 14:30:41 UTC 2022 (1643121041)
   RELEASE: default (/lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/default)
            Use raspi-config to change the release.

  VL805_FW: Dedicated VL805 EEPROM
     VL805: up to date
   CURRENT: 000138a1
    LATEST: 000138a1

Finally, with sound now working I brought everything up to date, and sound still works fine:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo apt-get autoremove && sudo apt-get autoclean

I do hope this helps, and works for others. Very best of luck! I'll keep my fingers crossed that mine stays working as it is now!