Cirrus Logic Audio Card

Is this supported in Volumio yet?
I remember the original Wolfson card for the RPi rev2 either took a fair bit of tinkering or didn’t work at all.

As it costs about the same as a Hifiberry Digi but offers quite a bit of versatility (e.g. analogue line out and in, digital out and in, built in stereo microphones, on board amp, etc) it would be nice if it was an option.

I’ve just bought a Hifiberry Digi which I’m sure will be a reliable product, but I would have been tempted by the Cirrus Logic if I could be confident it would work…

I have it working. TL;DR version is load volumio on your sd, then head here for directions on how to compile the kernel github.com/CirrusLogic/rpi-linu … g-the-code. Replace the kernel files. Works like a charm!

Hmm I’m glad I went with the Hifiberry Digi.
Why is it necessary to compile the kernel? What’s preventing it from just working?

Hi Volumio Team.

I see “Hias” - Matthias Reichl - did a fantastic job of debugging, improving and fixing the driver for the Cirrus Logic/Wolfson DAC.
According to his web page, http://www.horus.com/~hias/cirrus-driver.html , the driver has now been incorporated into the official RPi 4.9 kernel, so can we expect an official support for this DAC in Volumio anytime soon ?

I’m running a Cirrus DAC + RPi2 with Volumio 2.141 and the 4.4.14 kernel from Hias by mixing the 3 setup procedures found here :

Thanks for Volumio anyway … great product.

Yes, we are very close to updating Volumio’s kernel to 4.9.25, so the cirrus will be supported.
I imagine there is still the need to execute the userspace script to set the proper output, correct?

Hi Michelangelo.

According to what I read on Hias’ posts, yes you still need to run the config scripts (caution : use new scripts from Hias with kernel 4.9.x drivers, not the original from cirrus), but, basically, you only need to run them once to configure the output line, then settings are saved into the eeprom of the DAC.

By the way, I found out that this DAC can produce very high output levels (voltage) on the analog line-out, as I can ear serious clipping and distortion when setting Volumio volume above 50% (using the hardware mixer). There is probably a way to configure a lower output gain on the DAC via the scripts to fix that and use Volumio’s volume button full scale but I did not dig so deep yet.

I have limited time available but I can make some tests with the Cirrus DAC if needed.

For info, my setups :

  • RPi2 (wired ethernet) + Cirrus DAC + analog cable + Yamaha RX-A1010 + JMLab Chorus LCR700 (5x) + SR700(2) + SW700.
  • RPi2 (wifi dongle) + Cirrus + analog cable + Denon RCD-M40DAB

N.B. : One day, I’ll try to play with the SPDIF output of the Cirrus … but no time found yet.