Hello Volumio community!
I have been trying everything Volumio 3 (most recent release) can do on my RPi3B+ and over I’m very pleased and considering switching to Premium if the solution can be a full replacement of my current setup – hint: so far it’s not (yet).
Base system: OPPO BDP-205 using a USB HDD to play stereo (FLAC,DSD) and multi-ch (DTS, DVD-A, DSD) using the internal ES9038PRO 8-ch DAC for a decent Stereo / 5.1 speaker system. In that configuration, I do not use the USB AUDIO in or the HDMI in for music. I do however use UPnP up to the supported 96kHz/24-bit.
Everything works perfectly well but bringing the HDD over from my office room to the living room + using the rather bad/abandoned OPPO app on the phone or having to power on a TV display to navigate the files is annoying. It is tedious but manageable.
I recently purchased a Denafrips Pontus II 12th (stereo PCM/DSD DAC) and the USB input sounds a lot easier to manage than the HDMI or an extra I2S HAT. I had a RPi 3B+ lying around and… Google quickly brought me to the Volumio website. A fresh SDCard later I’m up and playing, filling up /mnt/INTERNAL/ with all I have.
Here are 4 issues I found with Volumio, from most critical to trivial. Maybe you could kindly point me towards posts I’ve missed that found a solution to these problems?
1] First ~1/3rd second of playing a new file is cut-off in USB, ~2 seconds in HDMI.
That happens on all devices streaming from Volumio and is a deal-breaker to go Premium for me. I have seen the complaint popping up in the forums but I haven’t found a fix this, seems to be related to speed negotiation with the device?
For example, Bill Wither’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” in DSF will start at “… no sunshine” on USB and “…n she’s gone” in HDMI. Kills the intro.
The OPPO never skips a bit when playing any file so the issue is not the receiver but the sender (Volumio). It “feels” like Volumio starts negotiating the traffic while sending the audio data, instead of sending… silence? until the handshake is completed?
2] UPnP resampling
Card 0, ID `b1', name `bcm2835 HDMI 1'
sampling rate 8000..192000 Hz
Card 5, ID `P1213', name `DENAFRIPS USB v3.12 | P12.1.3'
sampling rate 44100..1536000 Hz
I have tried everything (including meddling with the /etc/ conf files and stop/start services) but UPnP always defaults back to 44.1kHz/16-bit on Volumio. It doesn’t seem to probe the target device for capability and adjust to the maximum available quality like the OPPO does.
I’m using Foobar2000 for UPnP server with specific profiles set for each DAC. All set to accept these ranges 44.1~192 | 16~24 and Volumio only agrees to 44.1/16 with no playing mode information on the server side, which is consistent with no capability probing/adjusting.
=> Is there a way to increase the max quality of UPnP somewhere in Volumio?
This is not a deal breaker but it might be a very easy fix to simply set somewhere in the configuration files (via SSH) what my max specs are.
3] Multi-channel support
Card 0, ID `b1', name `bcm2835 HDMI 1'
1..8 channels
I have tons of multi-ch files from my CD dts/SACD collection. I play them easily with the OPPO and wondering if, using HDMI since the DACs are stereo only, it would be done with Volumio as well (even as a hack, not as part of the distribution).
I tried DTS but they play stereo channels only.
I tried multi-ch DSD and they crash MDP.
I do not have DD, DTS-HD or other MPL files to test at the moment.
I know multi-channel is not supported and is a lucky win if it works by chance but…
=> Has anyone succeeded in playing Hi-Res multi-ch with Volumio 3 over HDMI?
4] EMOJI in titles/tag will prevent playing.
Ex: Mr.Children – I 
U
Maybe the system default to UTF-8 instead of UTF-16?
=> Could it be possible to move to UTF-16?
Everything else works REALLY well and I started advocating Volumio on RPi to all my friends into music, DACs, Hi-Res, etc. Very good job there, hope to join as a premium eventually!
Thank you for reading it all.
Julien