Still not sure why the things I was trying from command-line didn't work, but this seems to be getting the job done pretty reliably:

autostart.sh:

(vcgencmd force_audio hdmi 1 >/dev/null 2>&1; sleep 8; mpg123 -Z /home/pi/RetroPie/bgm/*.mp3 >/dev/null 2>&1) & #bgm emulationstation #auto

.bashrc (excerpt):

[[ $(tty) == "/dev/tty1" ]] && (vcgencmd force_audio hdmi 0 >/dev/null 2>&1; pkill mpg123) #bgm # RETROPIE PROFILE START

...this seems to work as intended, even though I couldn't get it to work on command-line for whatever reason. With this setup the audio channel opens in time for the music to begin, and closes again when I quit to console.

In autostart.sh, I put vcgencmd before the sleep command because when I did the other way, sometimes it would open up in time for the music but other times it wouldn't. This way it opens up and "hums" for a few seconds before the music starts, but it always starts from the first instant, so an acceptable compromise.

In .bashrc, the original guide said to put the command inside the RETROPIE PROFILE section but that whole section gets rewritten if you update bashwelcometweak; putting it outside the section preserves it even when the welcome tweak is updated.

Are you sure your audio cable is not damaged ? You could check that the Headphone output is not muted - check if there's an 'M' under the volume slider in alsamixer.

@yewox50273 no, alsathread has always (at least, for longer than this issue) been used for pi3, which is why i was clarifying what @nesfredo was using. the change you refer to only made it the default on pi4.

it didn’t cause the skipping issue on pi3 in years past, so clearly alsathread/RA has had some kind of change causing the issue. we should bisect this to a specific retroarch commit (version is not specific enough) to find the culprit, but it would be tricky to do so since the issue seems to occur after a game has been running a while and is sometimes hard to spot.

@Ashpool That made no difference either.

@BuZz

I got it! ALTAMIXER was set to like 20%. Thank you very much.

@mitu I just figured it out moments ago after a lot of testing this morning. I have a third party music player that fades the volume before starting a game. I think what happens is it fades the system volume to fade the music before starting emulation. Then, when returning to ES, the System Volume remains what it was faded to prior to emulating the game.

This can be marked as resolved. I'll report this bug to the creator of the music player. Thank you!

bear in mind that even audiodriver=alsa causes a noticeable performance loss vs audio_driver=alsathread on a pi4. if jack is more demanding that either, it would be a non-starter.

@mitu said in No Audio From Samsung Tizen Smart TV:

Can you post the output of

aplay -l aplay -L

Output for aplay -l and aplay -L.

Use alsamixer and make sure the audio is not muted and/or the volume is set to something like 50% to hear something.

Tried AlsaMixer although I was a bit confused to how it worked. It was set to 66% with HDMI listed at the bottom. I pressed F3 for [Playback] thinking that was to test the audio but again, nothing coming out of the TV. I've double checked that it's not muted and the volume is turned up to a reasonable level.

I'm confused on what you thought that would be required. I think the noaudio option is clear enough on what it does.

I'm completely ignorant to computing, so when I was looking for a fix to the visual tearing through the kms video driver, every example code I saw online for that driver included the noaudio line. I felt it was best to follow those examples to the letter and not remove it, even though it stuck out as odd. Because it never interfered with my audio playback, I didn't think to question it afterwards.

EDIT: My apologies, I'm actually going to have to pack this in for now and return to it tomorrow. Fingers crossed for better results and a clearer head!

@bk said in Sound not working with HifiBerry:

Concerning the alsamixer, I assume I have to type "alsamixer sndrpihifiberry" or "alsamixer snd_rpi_hifiberry_dac"? If so, both give me "cannot open mixer: No such file or directory".

No, you should just type alsamixer and note the mixer's name (4th row on the top left menu). For instance, in the screenshot below the mixer is named Headphone.
6e169b26-75f2-459a-8dc8-8f15484be18f-image.png.
However, based on the error you're receiving (cannot open mixer) it looks like the device has no hardware volume control (mixer). You may be able to add a software volume control, following the instructions from this page.

@jimmyfromthebay that's weird because I run my game-override configs from the "configs" folder and I've not had any issues.

What's this?:

configs.hdmi

...is it supposed to say that, or...? That's not standard, I don't think...

Issue 1 can be easily solved by using the Audio menu in RetroPie and choosing your default output (Analog Jack/HDMI).

For #2 - The Headphone value can also be chosen in the EmulationStation settings, since it has been updated in June 2020 following the RPI OS changes.

Not sure which version of RetroPie are you using (version 4.4 is too old to support the PI4), but out of the box I think HDMI sound should work using the 4.7.1 image.

Make sure that in the Audio settings in the RetroPie system you choose HDMI as output, then in ES the settings should be:
AUDIO CARD: Default
AUDIO DEVICE: HDMI

For OMX audio output, just use ALSA and it should work.

@mitu that seems to have done the trick, thanks for your help.

@mitu

Ok I see.
So, EmulationStation and its emulator cores use ALSA and not PulseAudio so I shouldn't be doing anything with PulseAudio to get the switching to Bluetooth output.

I should just focus on getting ALSA to work with my Bluetooth headphones.

I successfully replaced the line

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d

in my config.txt file with

dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d

and now everything works perfectly! Thanks for the help @mitu

@hunksurvivorx Agree it's something to do with the newest update. It was perfect before because I played it briefly back in july. Playing it with the latest build and the sounds is terrible and even screeching at times.

Based on this output, I think you'd need to set in EmulationStation the Audio Card to Device.

To get the name of the mixer (volume control), run

amixer scontrols -c Device

and choose the 1st entry and set it as Audio Device. For instance, in my case, the USB audio card is named 'Controller':

amixer scontrols -c Controller Simple mixer control 'PCM',0 Simple mixer control 'Headset',0

I would use PCM as the AudioDevice settings in ~/.emulationstation/es_settings.cfg:

<string name="AudioCard" value="Controller" /> <string name="AudioDevice" value="PCM" />

This should fix the audio not working (or the volume slider rather) in EmulationStation.

For Amiberry, I'm not sure why it's not working - maybe it's trying to use the 'default' card and it's not working ?

Try following the advice here and create a /home/pi/.asoundrc file containing

defaults.pcm.!card 1 defaults.ctl.!card 1

@Leanne Thank you. It worked for me too.