Sound Not Working At All

BL4CKH0L3H34RT

The other day I set up my pi 5 with RetroPie. Everything works fine with the exception of sound. Sound will not output whatsoever and I've spent the last 2 days frantically searching for any solution to my problem to no avail. Every time I lauch a game it spits out the error message for half a second "AudioManager Error - Unable to open SDL audio: alsa: Unsupported audio format"

I'm attempting to use HDMI for the sound, and sound does work on the TV, I have tested with other devices. The version of RetroPie I'm using is 4.8.7.

abj

Did you change the audio to HDMI0 from raspi-config ?

BL4CKH0L3H34RT

@abj Yeah I have. Did it again just to check. Also when I go to Advaced Settings>Audio Config it says "No audio systems installed"

abj

I don't know what is wrong.
Did you install RetroPie on top of Bookworm Lite (recommended) or full Desktop?

BL4CKH0L3H34RT

@abj I installed it on top of lite

abj

@BL4CKH0L3H34RT

Try this to be sure that everything have the default settings:

RetroPie-Setup > audio > Hdmi 0.
and restart the EmulationStation.

Press the start button, while you are in Emulationstation menu, the sound settings must be:

Audio card : Default
Audio Device: HDMI.

If you have install the desktop from the RetroPIe setup script then ,
try to uninstall pulseaudio from here:

RetroPie => RetroPie Setup => Configuration/Tools => rasbiantools => Choose option 3 ( remove some uneede... ) and restart.

After that, make sure that you have the default settings that i post above.

BL4CKH0L3H34RT

@abj I've tripple checked, I have all of the settings set to those.

abj

Try to run this commands and add the results here:

aplay -l

Make sure that you are using the HDMI port near the PSU port.
Also. if you have a second Hdmi cable or TV, test and there please .

I reinstall RetroPie, just in case that something change recently, but it wasn't possible to reproduse the issue.

BL4CKH0L3H34RT

@abj I'm using the correct HDMI port, and I've checked on a seperate TV and the issue still persists. Here's the result of the aplay -l command:

0: vc4hdmi0 [vc4-hdmi-0], device 0: MAI PCM i2s-hifi-0 [MAI PCM i2s-hifi-0]
subdevices: 1/1
subdevice #0: subdevice #0
1: vc4hdmi1 [vc4-hdmi-1], device 0: MAI PCM i2s-hifi-0 [MAI PCM i2s-hifi-0]
subdevices: 1/1
subdevice #0: subdevice #0
2: Controller [Wireless Controller], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
subdevices: 1/1
subdevice #0: subdevice #0

mitu

Try these:

Do you have a $HOME/.asoundrc file ? Remove it and check if the audio works.
Check if you have the RetroPie Audio configuration file (which you'll get if you use the Audio menu in RetroPie) in /etc/alsa/conf.d/99-retropie.conf. If you don't have it, then re-configure the audio using the RetroPie's Audio entry (not with raspi-config).
Disconnect the PS4 controller. Do you get audio ?

BL4CKH0L3H34RT

@mitu Your first suggestion worked! Thank you so much!