Kodi-Plugin and Hifiberry DAC+

Audio Gear DACs
1

Just installed the Kodi-Plugin and am able to play media files via kodi. Unfortunately it uses the HDMI Output and not the Hifiberry DAC+ to play the Sound as it does under Volumio. What have I to do to change it that it plays the sound to the Same Output as configured in Volumio?

Micha

2

Hi Micha,

In the plugin please enable DAC output, this will make your soundcard appear in Kodi. After you’ve selected your soundcard in Kodi, you’ll hear the sound from the DAC instead.

3

Hi Saiyato,

Unfortunately I come to the same conclusion as mipi, who initiated the discusion.
I was using version volumio-2.714-2020-03-02-pi of Volumio and everything was working fine; Audio played over my HifiBerry DAC+ Pro.
Recently I decided to update Volumio to the latest version i.e. volumio-2.834-2020-09-24-pi (amongst others also in the hope that a newer version of Kodi would be possible; V18.9 is available whereas Volumio only supports 17.4), while performing an online update in Volumio.
Since then and after a full format and update of the SD card in the RPi and re-installing Kodi etc…Whatever I do with the settings, Kodi just shows a list of 5 Audio option, 3 of which in Alsa (HDMI, Headphones and one other, and 2 involving Pulse Audio), but never the option with the HifiBerry.
What has happened in the meantime…what am I doing wrong…
Your help is highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

ArjanH

4

Hi Saiyato, a short postscriptum.
Your Plugin is very much appreciated by me…it is great to share the features of Volumio and Kodi (in fact mainly Youtube) on one device. the sound quality of Youtube is magnificent on the Kodi/Volumio implementation.
Thanks for that.

ArjanH

5

Hi Arjan,

And probably others reading this as well. This has to do with different rights (hardened security) in Volumio for /etc/asound.conf

This affects pretty much every plugin without a workaround for the changed rights. I have a new way of writing the asound file, but it needs some testing and a PR to the Volumio plugin store. A quick and dirty workaround is chmod 777 /etc/, but that will open up your /etc/ directory. Note: I’m posting this on my phone, it’s probably possible to change the rights back to normal after setting the asound.conf file. :wink: There’s (I think) no easier way at this point

In other news, the fact that you’re only getting Kodi Krypton (v17) has to do with the fact that newer versions are not readily available for Debian Jessie. We are testing Volumio on Buster (which automatically comes with Kodi Leia (v18)), but we’re not quite there yet.

6

Oh and also happy to hear you like it of course :smile: I tend to get straight to the point (Dutch direct I guess)

7

Thank you Saiyato.
At least it tells me that I am not doing something wrong.
It would be nice if Volumio would warn their customers instead of letting them find out and spending ages in trying to get it working!!
I am not fully proficient in Linux etc, so would you mind to spell out the workaround in more detail so as even a layman like me could follow the steps…
I think you will do a lot of people a favour with this.
I am really looking forward to have youtube on volumio working again

Thanks again.

8

Hi Arjan,

There are a few additions to the above:

#1 what I mentioned would be a work-around for a (set of) plugin(s) from contributors (me in this case), I’m not part of the Volumio (core) team and in no position to issue warnings.

#2 most of the time I spend on plugins is supporting them, it’s hard to determine where to do all of the write-ups, because certain threads will be forgotten at some point. So I will do the write-up (once research is done, see #3) on the GitHub page of the plugin: https://github.com/Saiyato/volumio-kodi-plugin

#3 this is a fresh update, I just imaged the latest version for my test Pi and I see the following entries (even though I have a DAC):

PI: HDMI
PI: Analogue
PI: HDMI and Analogue
ALSA: Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound ser…
ALSA: PulseAudio Sound Server

Which means I’m missing my DAC, same behaviour as you have, this also means it needs more research. Somewhere along the way, something broke down and needs to be fixed. :wink:

9

Hi Saiyato,

thanks for the response.
I was hoping you could give me a solution right away…Apparently you still need to find the solution.
BTW, I can confirm that i find the same list of audio devices, whatever action I take (including old updates of the ALSA card lists).

I wish you good luck in finding these and I will find the update on Github, no problem.
Please could you spell out the necessary steps to update files in the system, so I don’t need to do a Linux course before I can repair my system.
Thanks in advance.
Best regards, Arjan

10

Hi Saiyato,
Would you be so kind to update me an any progress made.
I am hoping desperately for a possibility to run Kodi on top of Volumio with DAC support.

Thanks for you response.
Best Regards, Arjan

11

Hi Saiyato,

Any update??
Thanks
Arjan

12

Hi mate,

It’s getting a tad bit too complicated for me. I’m seeing different options in newer images. For example there’s PulseAudio which wasn’t there before and it’s config is causing issues for Kodi. So you’ll probably have to sacrifice Bluetooth capabilities in favor of Kodi with your DAC.

Fiddling with audio sinks is not my forté and we’ll soon see the new ALSA configs and chaining… haven’t had the time to truly investigate, but that changes things.

Kodi is on the priorities list, as it’s pretty much broken now.

13

Hi Saiyato,

Is there any workaround for this issue or we need to wait for final correction?

Thanks
Piotr