I bought a new USBridge ten days ago.
My setup is USBridge with Volumio v2.282, Dual LLC PSU & Allo Wi-Fi Adapter -> Chord Mojo. Dual LLC PSU is connected to USBridge and the Allo 5V adapter is connected to Sparky. The Wi-Fi adapter is in the USB3 port (it does not work in the USB 2.0 ports). My files are stored in WD MyCloud.
The initial setup was a breeze. But, I haven’t had a smooth listening session to date.
USBridge would be playing just fine but would suddenly stop playing. I could not find a pattern to these random stops. Initially, for the first 3-4 sessions, it happened right after I tried to stream something from my laptop using Tuneblade. After disconnecting the device in Tuneblade, the stops would occur almost within 2-3 tracks. So, I switched to Stream What You Hear and HTTP Streaming.
But that was not the issue. Even when I played entirely from the NAS, playback stops randomly. There seems to be no set pattern to this. Sometimes, it happened after 6-7 tracks, sometimes once per album and rarely (like today), each track. Most times, I do not get an error message. The playing time counter would keep on increasing normally, but I would get no sound. The file type (320kps mp3, FLAC, 24/96, DSD) does not have any bearing on these sudden stops either. Most of the time, switching Chord Mojo off and on resolves the issue.
But, there are a few other times when I would get “Failed to open ALSA device. No such file” error message. When I go to playback settings during these instances, only “atm_7059 link” would be available. In Mixer settings, Mixer type is set to “Hardware”, but Mixer Control name combo box has no entries. When I click the combo, it sort of disappears (this happens irrespective of Mojo is working or not working). I have to power cycle USBridge and Mojo to play music in these instances.
I also have a Raspberry Pi3 running Volumio. Both USBridge and Pi3 are on the same table. The router, to which MyCloud is connected, is seated just about 2.5’ above these two. The Wi-Fi strength of Pi3 is shown as 72 Mbps and that of USBridge is shown to be 300 Mbps. I never had any issues with Pi3, be it playing through the same Mojo (or) streaming from my laptop. I don’t know why the issue occurs only in USBridge.
I also tried to increase the “Audio Buffer Size” to 12 MB and “Buffer before Play” to 20%, but it had no effect.
Today, I reset Volumio to factory settings. Did a fresh setup, but am still facing the same issues. I have had 4 random stops in just about a couple of hours.
I am a complete newbie when it comes to Linux, so I didn’t know how to debug or where to look for answers. Hopefully, this can be resolved in this forum and I can finally just listen to music soon 