Audio Issues on the pi zero 1

[mixo1200]

Hello retropie friends,

I'm pretty new to this and I spent the last 2 days trying to find a solution.
i'm running retropie on my raspberry pi zero 1 wh.
everything works fine except the audio.
i'm using a usb dac stick, I somehow managed to get sound but it was very quiet and i couldn't control the volume. I tried a bunch of things mentioned in other forums and now I ended up with sound in emulation stations menu, but no sound in game, and the low volume is still a problem. idk what to do anymore as most tutorials seem to be for the rpi3 or 4 but none for the zero. i'm only planning to run pacman on it, no high end games so the zero should be fine. doesn't get warm even after hours of playing.

If you need any files or logs to understand the issue please tell me and I will post them all here. I had to modify a couple things like asound.conf and stuff (i'm pretty new to linux)

also sorry for my bad english ✌🏽

[mitu]

Please add your system info as requested in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first .

Which DAC are you using ? Can you post the output of the following commands:

aplay -l
amixer

You said you've created an ALSA configuration file (asound.conf), can you post its contents ?

[mixo1200]

@mitu
Alright so i'm running retropie version 4.8 (rpi 1/zero)
i flashed it with the official Raspberry Pi Imager v1.8.5 on a sandisk 128gb sd card.

i'm an electronics engineer so I can ensure there's no problems with the wiring or the power supply.

i'm using one of these usb hats:
https://amzn.eu/d/aBGNNAN

aplay -l results in:

card 0: CM38380864 [CM383-80864], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

amixer shows:

Simple mixer control 'Speaker' ,0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 1008
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 1008 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 1008 [100%] [0.00db] [on]
Simple mixer control 'PCM' ,0
  Capabilities: volume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: 0 - 255
  Front Left: 255 [100%]
  Front Right: 255 [100%]
Simple mixer control 'Mic' ,0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined cvolume cvolume- joined pswitch pswitch-joined cswitch cswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Capture channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 496 Capture 0 - 496
  Mono: Playback 8 [2%] [0.50dB] [off] Capture 496 [100%] [31.00dB] [on]

in /etc/boot.config
I set "dtparam=audio=off"

cat /proc/asound/modules spits out:

0 snd_usb_audio

I deleted the asound conf file by accident. but the problem persists anyways even after reboot. sound in emulationstation, but no sound in games, no matter which emulator or game I use.

Also I have no clue what to set in emulation stations audio settings. I tried Master, Speaker, PCM, but no sound in games.

[mitu]

I deleted the asound conf file by accident. but the problem persists anyways even after reboot. sound in emulationstation, but no sound in games, no matter which emulator or game I use.

Since there's only one card, I don't think a configuration file matters, unless the card doesn't have a mixer available (which doesn't seem the case). If you run speaker-test, do you hear the test sounds ? Does alsamixer works to change the volume ?

Also I have no clue what to set in emulation stations audio settings. I tried Master, Speaker, PCM, but no sound in games.

You can try to set either PCM or Spearker, but this only controls the volume and has no effect on the how games/emulators are configured w.r.t. audio, though having just one card shouldn't cause any confusion.
Which emulators are you running, where you don't have any audio ? Any Retroarch/libretro emulators should use ALSA and work.

[mixo1200]

@mitu

speaker-test outputs a white noise sound. works.

I've tested several emulators, including libretro.
snes, nes, gamegear, mame. no sound in any of these. when i scroll through the settings in emulation stations retropie configuration menu, i hear the click sound effects though. i'm so confused. This can't be that hard to set up :(
And YES, I can change the volume with alsamixer. Speakertest changes the volume accordingly.

I noticed another weird behaviour:
When I type "amixer scontrols -D CM38380864"
it says "amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such file or directory"

Is CM38380864 not the device name?

[mitu]

@mixo1200 said in Audio Issues on the pi zero 1:

And YES, I can change the volume with alsamixer. Speakertest changes the volume accordingly.

OK, so the card works, just not with emulators. Get a verbose log from RetroArch and post it on pastebin.com/

I noticed another weird behaviour:
When I type "amixer scontrols -D CM38380864"

Device name is USB Audio, CM38380864 is the card name.

[mixo1200]

@mitu

I tried the same with "USB Audio". same error message.

also now I don't have any sound at all. not even in emulation stations menu. i'm about to give up. I didn't change anything. i don't get it.

Here's the log:

https://pastebin.com/0x0RQnv9

[mitu]

This is not a verbose log, but looks like the error is from ALSA initialization in RetroArch. Did you edit retroarch.cfg or tried to change the (ALSA/audio) configuration through the RetroArch menus ?

[mixo1200]

@mitu

no I didnt change anything in there yet.
also if I run "alsamixer" it says "cannot open mixer: no such file or directory"

also doesn't work as sudo.
ls /usr/bin | grep alsa
shows that alsamixer is installed.
when I try "alsamixer -c 1" it opens alsamixer.

shouldn't my usb audio device be assigned to id 0 as "emulation station" tried to open "card 0" in the log?
i mean the rpi zero doesn't have an audio jack, so idk why it's set to 1.
i'm soo confused right now like I said I didn't change anything during this thread. seems like something is changing stuff automatically? idk. i started using linux a few months ago i'm pretty new to all of this sorry.

[mitu]

@mixo1200 said in Audio Issues on the pi zero 1:

when I try "alsamixer -c 1" it opens alsamixer.

That's weird, aplay -l shows just one card. Could be an issue with an ALSA configuration file (per-user), but if both amixer and alsamixer are run by the same user (i.e. no sudo or other users) then there's no such problem.

Reinstall from scratch, disable the audio in config.txt and see if you get the same issue in emulators.

[mixo1200]

@mitu
I just reinstalled alsamixer and now everything is working. still no idea what caused this issue. made a backup image of my sd card now. thx for ur replies bud, learned a little more about alsa✌🏽