USB Audio
#16
Too expensive when you consider the price of the PI...I ended up buying the sound card in the link below and the sound is excellent on SPDIF and analog...no popping between songs. Problem would be solved if the PI's version of XBMC supported ALSA, although I did come across this post (http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=1052) in which someone is using Pulsueaudio with a PI version of XBMC....Just haven't had much luck getting that going myself.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCM2704-USB-DAC-...2c6899a580

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#17
(2012-11-19, 00:39)Gobam Wrote: If you are needing this for music, this could be the device to use. The following is the link to Amazon, didn't found a manufacturer page:

http://www.amazon.com/ViewHD-Analog-Conv...B008LOIKX6

If I get fed up of tracing info down and trying stuff out that's probably what I'll get. I really didn't want another power transformer to plug in though. I'm looking to use this mostly for HD movies but you made a point of saying music. I've read a few times that USB/toslink may not have enough bandwidth to support some of the upper hd audio formats. Anyone know just how much bandwidth do the high end digital audio streams chew up or what the limitations are of this kind of setup?

I'm currently playing with alsa on raspbian and have only managed to get stereo out the hdmi cable. Info on this stuff is really thin and i'm not really up on linux and installing troubleshooting linux hardware issues, but I'm ramping up. So far aplay -L identifies the xonar. Also noticed audio muted by default and fixed that. Tonight I'll try pluging in some analog headphones into the xonar instead of the toslink and see if that works.

Can anyone confirm if any xbmc distro on raspberry pi got the new xbmc AE? Or are we stuck with the old omxplayer? When looking at the frodo stuff the link for raspberry distros appears dated.


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#18
They all got the new AudioEngine (wiki). AE is more than HD audio passthrough. I wish I could tell you more, but my own knowledge on linux audio is probably more limited than you guys.
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#19
I futzed around with USB sound cards, but it was pretty frustrating. I got this http://www.monoprice.com/products/produc...1&format=2 and I haven't thought about this issue since.
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#20
(2012-11-19, 00:47)bac522 Wrote: Too expensive when you consider the price of the PI...I ended up buying the sound card in the link below and the sound is excellent on SPDIF and analog...no popping between songs. Problem would be solved if the PI's version of XBMC supported ALSA, although I did come across this post (http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=1052) in which someone is using Pulsueaudio with a PI version of XBMC....Just haven't had much luck getting that going myself.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCM2704-USB-DAC-...2c6899a580

Image

I still think the best route is this card, only $14 and works like a charm. No extra power required as the USB port powers it. Just seems silly to me to buy stuff that cost more than the PI itself IMHO.

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#21
(2012-11-20, 12:57)bac522 Wrote:
(2012-11-19, 00:47)bac522 Wrote: Too expensive when you consider the price of the PI...I ended up buying the sound card in the link below and the sound is excellent on SPDIF and analog...no popping between songs. Problem would be solved if the PI's version of XBMC supported ALSA, although I did come across this post (http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=1052) in which someone is using Pulsueaudio with a PI version of XBMC....Just haven't had much luck getting that going myself.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCM2704-USB-DAC-...2c6899a580

Image

I still think the best route is this card, only $14 and works like a charm. No extra power required as the USB port powers it. Just seems silly to me to buy stuff that cost more than the PI itself IMHO.

is this card plug and play with Openelec Frodo?
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#22
Yes, it should be, the card just uses standard linux USB sound drivers that should be in all versions of an OS. But there are some issues I've had with USB port on the PI in general that has caused some problems for my, YMMV. I have no problems running pianobar or using mplayer to stream my FLAC ripped CD's, but I've had some issues with XBMC causing the ethernet connection to drop for me occasionally. There is more info about the USB port problems in general at http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewto...t=elephant.

Only got the card about a week or so ago and I haven't had a chance to dig into XBMC further regarding this. Also standard versions of XBMC will not work with this card yet because they didn't compile ALSA into the builds, so you need to follow this post instead http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=1052)
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#23
(2012-11-20, 14:55)bac522 Wrote: Yes, it should be, the card just uses standard linux USB sound drivers that should be in all versions of an OS. But there are some issues I've had with USB port on the PI in general that has caused some problems for my, YMMV. I have no problems running pianobar or using mplayer to stream my FLAC ripped CD's, but I've had some issues with XBMC causing the ethernet connection to drop for me occasionally. There is more info about the USB port problems in general at http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewto...t=elephant.

Only got the card about a week or so ago and I haven't had a chance to dig into XBMC further regarding this. Also standard versions of XBMC will not work with this card yet because they didn't compile ALSA into the builds, so you need to follow this post instead http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=1052)

OK i just found another seller that had 4 for sale of same card your link has sold out - my main aim is for xbmc usb audio so I can play 5.1 to my amp - hoping this is possible
[EDIT] but may have jumped the gun here alpha stuff lookng laggy and only for audio on music, not video.....hmmmmmm have I got this right? [/edit]
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#24
Rebuilt the latest xbmc with my pulseaudio patches. Enable/Disable audio engine can be achieved from raspbmc settings itself. I only tested it with TuneIn audio addon and so far so good. Please give it a try and let me how it goes.

http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?...4#pid36764
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#25
(2012-11-22, 02:37)s7mx1 Wrote: Rebuilt the latest xbmc with my pulseaudio patches. Enable/Disable audio engine can be achieved from raspbmc settings itself. I only tested it with TuneIn audio addon and so far so good. Please give it a try and let me how it goes.

http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?...4#pid36764

but this is for audio only yeah - will it work with movies?
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#26
(2012-11-22, 14:55)ajerazzor Wrote:
(2012-11-22, 02:37)s7mx1 Wrote: Rebuilt the latest xbmc with my pulseaudio patches. Enable/Disable audio engine can be achieved from raspbmc settings itself. I only tested it with TuneIn audio addon and so far so good. Please give it a try and let me how it goes.

http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?...4#pid36764

but this is for audio only yeah - will it work with movies?

No
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#27
(2012-11-22, 14:55)ajerazzor Wrote:
(2012-11-22, 02:37)s7mx1 Wrote: Rebuilt the latest xbmc with my pulseaudio patches. Enable/Disable audio engine can be achieved from raspbmc settings itself. I only tested it with TuneIn audio addon and so far so good. Please give it a try and let me how it goes.

http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?...4#pid36764

but this is for audio only yeah - will it work with movies?

The sound will come out from the usb speakers during movie playback but I cannot guarantee that you will not have any sync problems. A few code need to be adjusted to claim that its not worse than the previous version.
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#28
(2012-09-18, 16:20)gimli Wrote:
(2012-09-18, 15:49)Fingolin Wrote: Hi there,

I have an issue to report about USB Audio with my Raspberry-Pi and OpenElec.
My external USB Audio DAC is recognized correctly by alsa and I tried to change it with this tutorial (http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title=..._menusound )

I think, that XBMC isn't using Alsa audio.. so I can just choose between HDMI and Analog.(I can't change the standard Audio device)
It would be nice if it would be possible to also select an external Audio-card... The internal isn't that good.
I hope that's possible!
Thanks!

XBMC doesn't support ALSA on the PI. Even if we support ALSA, only PAPlayer for audio would work. The video player is limited to OpenMAX and it's components and doesn't support ALSA.

I think XBMC Team should consider adding support for ALSA on the RPi, even if this would only work with just music.
RPi with DAC or quality usb soundcard would make a nice cheap and quality solution for playing music, remotely controlled by the android app.
The selected audi device should be rotate automatically between the external usb soundcard and the onboard one (hdmi or analog output) according to the current playing media (video or music).

p.s. Does the ALSA driver for the RPi is ready at all ?
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#29
Don't think the official support for external usb sound card on pi will come any time soon. You option will be DIY or rely on external patches.

The alsa driver for on board audio is far from ready.
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#30
XBMC is open source, so no one's really stopping anyone from working on this. gimli doesn't want to work on it, and he has good reasons for that. If others are able to get this to work and are able to present a solution that is reasonable, then it would be given fair consideration, but that's up to the people who want it.
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