[SOLVED] No HDMI sound and volume keeps resetting to 0

bdpyle

Hey guys, I know there are a lot of forum posts about this same issue, but I've looked at all of them and nothing has helped. I am building a handheld gaming console with a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB and a 5 inch display. Sound works fine through the Raspberry Pi 3.5mm audio jack, but I wanted to use my screen because it has speakers and an audio jack. However, neither works. The RetroPie volume also keeps resetting to 0 when I change the audio settings to HDMI

My audio settings on the RetroPie main menu are as follows:

Audio Card: Default / HDMI (I tried both)
Audio Device: HDMI
OMX Player Audio Device: Alsa

When I go into alsamixer I am presented with 3 sound cards:

bcm2835 Headphones
vc4-hdmi-0
vc4-hdmi-1

I have tried all three, and none of them work. When I select either of the HDMI sound cards the screen just says "This sound device does not have any controls".

When I go into Raspi-config audio settings and check the different audio output options, only the option for Headphones show up. There is no HDMI options

Here are my HDMI / Audi settings in config.txt:

hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_cvt=800 480 60
hdmi_drive=2
dtparam=audio=on

I am also not able to plug in any other consoles to the display to test the audio because its glued into my case.

If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

helloThere

@bdpyle

Had a similar issue with trying to get my sound to output to the 3.5mm jack.

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Sound-Issues/#using-the-built-in-hdmi-audio

Maybe this needs to be uncommented: hdmi_force_edid_audio=1

mitu

@bdpyle said in No HDMI sound and volume keeps resetting to 0:

When I go into alsamixer I am presented with 3 sound cards:

bcm2835 Headphones
vc4-hdmi-0
vc4-hdmi-1

You seem to have configured the vc4-kms-v3d overlay in config.txt, instead of the default fkms overlay. Any reason you've done that ?

bdpyle

@mitu I'm honestly not sure what that is. I didn't add that to my config.txt. I will say that I have a 64-bit version of Retropie that can run Wii and Gameube games natively, so the OS may have been adited to add that in.

mitu

@bdpyle said in No HDMI sound and volume keeps resetting to 0:

I will say that I have a 64-bit version of Retropie that can run Wii and Gameube games natively, so the OS may have been adited to add that in.

RetroPie support for 64bit is still not part of any official release. Any 3rd party images are not supported here, as stated in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

bdpyle

@mitu Here are the lines in my config.txt file:

# Enable DRM VC4 V3D drive
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
max_framebuffers=2
arm_64bit=1

bdpyle

@hellothere Just tried uncommenting that, but still no luck.

I am getting the following errors in alsamixer:

VolumeControl::init() - failed to find mixer elements
alsactl: get_control:256: Cannot read control '3,0,0,Playback Channel Map,0': Invalid argument

bdpyle

@mitu So are you thinking that the reason it isn't working is because I am using a 64-bit version of RetroPie?

mitu

No, the audio errors are from enabling the kms GPU driver, which also adds the new HDMI audio driver.
Other than that, who knows what other configurations have been added to the image by its author - one of the reasons we don't support 3rd party images.

bdpyle

@mitu Thanks for the help. Just flashed a stock image of retropie onto a new SD card and audio works perfectly through the screen. Going to try removing

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d

and see if that works

bdpyle

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