Fix for no sound through Topping D10 USB sound card via Raspberry Pi

[daws0n]

Hey everyone

I recently spent a couple of hours trying to get RetroPie to output to the Topping D10 USB soundcard connected to my Raspberry Pi 4, got there in the end with much tinkering! Thought it would be helpful post up my findings here incase anyone is experiencing similar issues...

If you also find that EmulationStation's Sound Setting > Audio Card / Audio Device Configuration is not assigning correctly on the latest version, I hope this helps. In short, to work around this you need to ensure that your designated USB sound device is set as "default".

Exit EmulationStation to enter Terminal (F4 key)

For ease of configuration, disable Raspberry Pi's built in audio hardware:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt
replace "dtparam-audio=on" with "dtparam-audio=off"

Reboot then return to Terminal.

check for USB sound device connectivity via:

lsusb

aplay -l

(note the card NUMBER listed from aplay output)

run following command and pay attention to value after "CARD=". You should observe that nothing is listed under "default:" :

aplay -L

before continuing, ensure that sound is working through USB device:

running "speaker-test" with no arguments should produce an error as "default" audio device is NOT assigned.

running with these arguments should produce sound:

speaker-test -D hw:CARD=[NAME] -c2 -r 44100
speaker-test -D sysdefault:CARD=[NAME] -c2 -r 44100

e.g

speaker-test -D hw:CARD=D10s -c2 -r 44100
speaker-test -D sysdefault:CARD=D10s -c2 -r 44100

If all OK, finally you need to edit the following file. This ensures that the card is assigned as "default" device:

sudo nano $HOME/.asoundrc

assuming card NUMBER value above is 1, change all instances of "card 0" to "card 1".

E.g

pcm.!default {
type asym
playback.pcm {
type plug
slave.pcm "output"
}
capture.pcm {
type plug
slave.pcm "input"
}
}
pcm.output {
type hw
card 1
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
}

Onced save, run "speaker-test" command again, this time with no arguments. It should now produce sound. Once rebooted, EmulationStation should also produce sound with no Sound Settings re-configuration required. On my system, changing audio card / audio device config makes no difference (even setting to NULL still produces sound) hence the work around above.