[SOLVED] USB Audio dongle have no sound in emulators.

VladoPortos

Hello all,
I'm as you might say RetroPie "virgin" - Installed today for the first time.

I got most of the stuff working and bit of understanding how its all working together.

I have Raspberry Pi3 and in it USB Audio Card Sound Blaster Play! 2 + keyboard + mouse + Xbox 360 USB controller

I went over posts regarding getting audio working over USB soundcard, and I got it working half way... I can play anything from console no issues, its nicely recognized in AlsaMixer:

qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq AlsaMixer v1.0.28 qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqk
x Card: Sound Blaster Play! 2                          F1:  Help               x
x Chip: USB Mixer                                      F2:  System information x
x View: F3:[Playback] F4: Capture  F5: All             F6:  Select sound card  x
x Item: Speaker [dB gain: -10.00, -10.00]              Esc: Exit

When I browse in menu selection of retropie I can hear click and when I run for example wolfenstein from PORTS it detects the sound and works fine. However virtually none of the emulators produce any sounds :(

My configs looks like:

**pi@RetroBox:~ $ lsusb**
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 041e:323d Creative Technology, Ltd  <- Sound card
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 045e:028e Microsoft Corp. Xbox360 Controller
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1c4f:0002 SiGma Micro Keyboard TRACER Gamma Ivory
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 89e5:101b
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

**pi@RetroBox:~ $ cat ~/.asoundrc**
pcm.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
}

**pi@RetroBox:~ $ aplay -l**
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 0: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA]
  Subdevices: 8/8
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
  Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 1: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: S2 [Sound Blaster Play! 2], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I have also recompiled emulationstation to get rid of this message:
VolumeControl::init() - Failed to find mixer elements!

( following the guide here: https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues/433 )

Message is gone, but no sound in emulators and I'm out of ideas :(

backstander

@VladoPortos

I might not be much help but awhile back I was trying to get my Plantronics GameCom 780 Gaming Headset (just the audio, not the mic) working and I was having trouble getting audio out of the headset speakers but I had remembered I made a change to my /boot/config.txt where I had set hdmi_drive = 2 so I just put a pound sign # hdmi_drive = 2 in front of it and then it started working except I never could get the mixer to find it so I could change the volume.

In my /etc/asound.conf I had:

pcm.!default {
 type hw card 1
}
ctl.!default {
 type hw card 1
}

I have already re-flashed RetroPie since I did this so I'm just looking off my notes and there is no mention of blacklisting anything but I might've done that for something. I can't remember though.

backstander

Here is what I found about disabling the onboard sound (snd-bcm2835)

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-blacklist.conf

blacklist snd_bcm2835

NOTE if the above doesn’t work, try adding this step

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

dtparam=audio=off

VladoPortos

@backstander
Well aplay -l shows now just and only my USB sound card:

pi@RetroBox:~ $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: S2 [Sound Blaster Play! 2], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

But still no sound from emulators, well almost... N64 emulator played sound just ok, and ports... SNES/NES/Playstation have no sound... I'm now almost thinking that my roms do not have sound or something.. but I'm pretty sure they have since it was hard coded in them and there would be no reason for anybody to strip it out...

I personally thinks maybe its something with retroarch, I'm trying now specify correct HW in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg under audio_device = , but so far no luck :(

VladoPortos

5 Min later I figured it out !
Ok so since my aplay -L looks like this:

pi@RetroBox:~ $ aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
sysdefault:CARD=S2
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    Front speakers
surround21:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
dmix:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    Direct sample mixing device
dsnoop:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    Direct sample snooping device
hw:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=S2,DEV=0
    Sound Blaster Play! 2, USB Audio
    Hardware device with all software conversions

I had to find audio_device = "" in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg and change it to:
audio_device = "sysdefault:CARD=S2"

After that rest of the emulators plays sound ! I'm so happy ! :D

backstander

Update
I'm glad you got it working!

@VladoPortos said in USB Audio dongle have no sound in emulators.:

I personally thinks maybe its something with retroarch, I'm trying now specify correct HW in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg under audio_device = , but so far no luck :(

I agree, it sounds like it's just the RetroArch emulators without sound. I also think it might be a setting in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

RetroPie comes with a backup of their custom all retroarch.cfg with default settings. It is located here:
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg.rp-dist

You could test with default settings by backing up your original retroarch.cfg and then copy retroarch.cfg.rp-dist to retroarch.cfg.