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Persistent pi problems

deebster

deebster

Half Man Half Biscuit
First off, apologies for rambling or if I descend into a rant as I'm fast running out of patience with getting the audio output on my pi consistently working.

It's a pi 4, 4GB, running LMS on piCoreplayer with USB output. I do like to use a monitor to control it from time to time so have Jivelite installed, and I also shut it down each night along with power to the ethernet switch box it gets its network feed from. I do this via the monitor as that is the only method of control out of the half a dozen I have that has a shut down option.

The issue is some days when I turn it on I get no audio output. From looking on its attached monitor or via LMS it appears tracks are playing (streamed from Tidal/radio or local ALAC files) but as I say, no sound. I'm sure it's not a DAC or amp issue as they both behave perfectly normally all the time except when the pi doesn't. It is only some days though, and often but not always a reboot is all that's needed. It will then play perfectly well all day and often for days, but then the same problem resurfaces. I do make sure the ethernet switch is on for a minute or so before turning the pi on, and I know the ethernet switch works as I also connect my work laptop to it.

I started on v6 of the pCP software and last week updated to v7 only to then read about issues playing ALAC files, but as recommended a full update to squeezelite seemed to fix the issue. Until the next restart that is, with you guessed it, no sound. After getting fed up with v7 and seeing no improvements to it I went back to v6.1.0 (full reflash of SD card and setup from scratch) and after getting the prompt to update it am now on LMS 8.1.1.

Yesterday it played fine all day, but this morning no sound. Then when I turned its monitor on (often it is off) I started getting sound through the monitor's speakers only. After removing/reinstalling jivelite and resaving the audio setting (which always shows USB) still no sound. If I turn HDMI power off I lose monitor sound and connection, but still get nothing through USB. When after a net search I end up on the forums where the developers hang out I quickly get lost on the issues and settings changes that are being mentioned.

It's such a shame as I really like what the pi and its software developers are doing, but constantly having to deal with issues is putting me off a bit. So, hand waved, sad face on, anyone able to help me out here please?
 
I leave my Pi on all the time. I run moOde and it does have a shutdown option and reboots fine (unlike Volumio in my experience). But the power draw is miniscule (under 2w IIRC), and it's a pain to wait for the LED to stop blinking before pulling the plug each time. Compare this to people leaving a class A amp or 10 box Naim system on 24 hours a day. You're probably consuming less power than the faceplate LEDs on someone's active system. :)

So yeah, get it in a working state and then leave it on would be my easy solution!
 
Sounds like a problem with turning it on and off. May need further development or may be a bug. I suggest you leave it on.Mine just resorts to a clock face when it stops playing music.
 
Well, would you Adam & Eve it, it's working again now. Dunno if that makes me happy or more annoyed.

Thanks though gents, maybe it is just that simple. So much for trying to be energy conscious.
 
deebster said:
Well, would you Adam & Eve it, it's working again now. Dunno if that makes me happy or more annoyed.

Thanks though gents, maybe it is just that simple. So much for trying to be energy conscious.
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I wouldn't beat myself up about leaving this on all the time. The energy it's using when idle (and in action) turns to a little bit of heat, which is probably a benefit most of the year.

I recently built a class A amp that seemed like a good idea when I started it (early spring in Valencia). But I finished it in late summer and it really heated the room up when in use (never left on otherwise), and required more AC to offset on really hot days. So I found it a new owner up north in the UK where the heat output contributes to warming the house.

Now I use an old Sansui AU-717 that runs very cool. And of course it's only on when in use!
 
This is 100% inspired by the problem with my Pi4 that I just resolved today, so 99% probability that it's irrelevant.

In my case, I found out that the USB controller would randomly not work on some boots, but because I so rarely reboot it it had never come up before. This meant that my USB disk with music on it was not detected and I couldn't work directly on the device via a USB keyboard. Needless to say, a DAC, if one were to be plugged in, also wouldn't work. After much investigation both on the device and on forums I found that it's a known problem at least on my distro. I have Arch Linux ARM 64-bit installed on the device, which uses a Linux kernel built directly from the upstream source (i.e. "mainline kernel"). The fix in this case was to use a kernel built from the Raspberry Pi foundation's fork of Linux. Luckily, someone has been maintaining this for Arch so it was no trouble for me. I don't know what the kernel situation is on picoreplayer though and whether this might be a problem or not.

As a test, when the sound isn't working, can you use the USB ports for anything else? E.g. if you plug in a USB drive can you mount/read it? Or, when you have the monitor on, does a USB keyboard send keys properly?
 
Tw99 said:
Have a look at this thread, which contained the solution when I had a similar problem:

https://forums.slimdevices.com/show...r-USB-Dac-is-disconnected&p=961322#post961322
Click to expand...

Thanks, but I can't see where I access those settings. On the Squeezelite Settings tab I see the audio output dropdown and in there I have always set it to USB audio. I did click on Card Control a few minutes ago and saw the internal audio option was enabled, so have disabled that and rebooted and it still works, so for now anyway I want to try not to mess with anything unless I need to, lest I summon forth any more demons.

gustav_errata said:
As a test, when the sound isn't working, can you use the USB ports for anything else? E.g. if you plug in a USB drive can you mount/read it? Or, when you have the monitor on, does a USB keyboard send keys properly?
Click to expand...

Yep, a mouse works fine and a conected USB drive can be read as tracks appear to play.
 
From what you say above its a problem with where the audio stream is going. When you have no sound out of the USB you do have sound via HDMI and presumably the other way round. Somewhere you need to define the default audio output device HDMI or USB.

Cheers,

DV
 
I agree DV, and thought I had, but admittedly the last time I set it up from scratch I got a bit cocky and did it from memory so might've missed something somewhere. It all worked though and I always save settings changes, so it still has me a bit puzzled.

For now though all is well, so I'm gonna leave it alone and enjoy the music. Must remember. Don't switch off.
 
deebster said:
Thanks, but I can't see where I access those settings. On the Squeezelite Settings tab I see the audio output dropdown and in there I have always set it to USB audio. I did click on Card Control a few minutes ago and saw the internal audio option was enabled, so have disabled that and rebooted and it still works, so for now anyway I want to try not to mess with anything unless I need to, lest I summon forth any more demons.
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You specify it in "output setting", once you've selected USB as the output device type. Click on the "more>" link on that setting and it will give you a list of all the possible output devices. You pick the one that looks like "FRONT:CARD=yourdacnamehere,DEV=0" .
 
Thanks again. Another slight issue I have is that most of the time I use an old iPad to update settings, but the 'more>' tool tips can't be seen (how do you hover over something with a touchscreen?), and when I go to my main computer (to hit the Reboot button as this simply refuses to work on the iPad) I forget to look at them. I know, I know. New iPad on the way.

Anyway, I left the pi on last night and this morning it is playing just fine so I hope I'm OK now but will try that change if I have any problems.
 
I've got a similar setup with Raspberry Pi 4 running picoreplayer via a USB DAC. I noticed straight from the off that the output would revert to the built-in sound if the DAC was not switched on at the time the Pi is booting up, so maybe you have the same problem. Workaround in my case is to always power on the DAC before the Pi.
 
striped67 said:
I've got a similar setup with Raspberry Pi 4 running picoreplayer via a USB DAC. I noticed straight from the off that the output would revert to the built-in sound if the DAC was not switched on at the time the Pi is booting up, so maybe you have the same problem. Workaround in my case is to always power on the DAC before the Pi.
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Yes, that can also be an issue. I wrote a small script that waited for the DAC to become available before starting squeezelite, so I could turn things on in any order.
 
striped67 said:
I've got a similar setup with Raspberry Pi 4 running picoreplayer via a USB DAC. I noticed straight from the off that the output would revert to the built-in sound if the DAC was not switched on at the time the Pi is booting up, so maybe you have the same problem. Workaround in my case is to always power on the DAC before the Pi.
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This is normal music player behaviour. At start up the player will look for your specified DAC and if its not available it will use the default output device. Some players have a 'rescan' option that you can use to redirect the output to the correct device if you powered up with the DAC off.

Cheers

DV
 
striped67 said:
I've got a similar setup with Raspberry Pi 4 running picoreplayer via a USB DAC. I noticed straight from the off that the output would revert to the built-in sound if the DAC was not switched on at the time the Pi is booting up, so maybe you have the same problem. Workaround in my case is to always power on the DAC before the Pi.
Click to expand...
For some additional information, there has been discussion on the slimdevices forum about issues when USB DACs are turned on and off. It's possible this relates to the OP's problem.

See https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?113661-Start-restart-squeezelite-when-plug-in-USB-dac specifically. There is a solution there (possibly too complex for some) to automatically re-start the player when a DAC gets connected and powered up after the player ("squeezelite") has already started.

EDIT: BTW I wonder if turning off the RPi's internal audio via the "Card Control" button on the "Squeezelite Settings" tab might help the OP?
 
Thanks gents. Another little quirk here in deebsterworld is that USB output doesn't go direct to the DAC but via a Behringer UCA222 that serves as a USB to optical converter, and gets its power from the pi.

Edit: well, when I said it was working fine this morning it wasn't quite. I was getting a scratching noise in the right speaker every half a minute or so, similar to vinyl noise. This was on local files and streamed. So I got brave and rebooted and it is now playing perfectly' so I think turning off the internal audio setting mentioned above may have done it for me. Just adding this if it helps anyone reading this thread, perhaps you @striped67.
 
Turning the Pi off and on every day caused endless hassle for me, constantly having to change SD cards or overwrite them again and again. Once I let the thing alone and left it on all the time, no more hassles. I tried one of those power leads that have a switch for turning on/off but it didn’t make any difference, still crashed.
 
eevo1969 said:
Turning the Pi off and on every day caused endless hassle for me, constantly having to change SD cards or overwrite them again and again. Once I let the thing alone and left it on all the time, no more hassles. I tried one of those power leads that have a switch for turning on/off but it didn’t make any difference, still crashed.
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Was it Volumio? In my experience moOde handles restarts a lot better. Either way it's best to shut it down via the UI, wait about a minute, then turn it off.
 
eevo1969 said:
Turning the Pi off and on every day caused endless hassle for me, constantly having to change SD cards or overwrite them again and again. Once I let the thing alone and left it on all the time, no more hassles. I tried one of those power leads that have a switch for turning on/off but it didn’t make any difference, still crashed.
Click to expand...

The OP is using picoreplayer which runs from RAM, so can just be switched off without any fear of sd card corruption. That's actually one of its selling points.
 
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