Hifiberry DAC2 HD ALSA error

Help and Support Compatibility Lists
1

Have just purchased one of these boards before discovering the previous incompatibility threads from a year ago.

Have tried a couple of the mentioned fixes but am still getting the ALSA error when running on Pi4B with latest Volumio. Did the community eventually give up on trying to solve this?

2

Hey @thom,

Welcome to the community. The HiFiBerry DAC2 HD has indeed been a bit of a special case. What you are seeing is not a generic ALSA problem but tied to the kernel driver support for the DAC2 HD.

Before anything else we need to know exactly what you are running. Please confirm:

  • Exact Volumio version number (from System Info page).
  • Whether it is Volumio 3 (Buster) or Volumio 4 (Bookworm Beta).
  • Where you got the image from (official download site or some other repo).
  • Complete hardware details:
    • Raspberry Pi 4B model and RAM size
    • Power supply make and rating
    • Storage type (microSD, SSD, NVMe, USB stick)
    • Any other HATs or devices connected besides the DAC2 HD

Without that, it is impossible to tell if you are on a stable release, the current Beta, or an older build. There is no such thing as “latest” unless you provide the version string.

Also, no logs = no help. Please follow the guide here and post the link:
https://help.volumio.com/help/how-to-send-a-log-link-for-a-bug-report

Only with version details and a proper log can we check if the ALSA error is driver related (DAC2 HD overlay support) or a different problem.

Kind Regards,

3

Hi Nerd thankyou for the reply.

I put the various forum threads on this topic into ChatGPT and it returned the correct configuration settings to get the DAC working.

4

I had the same problem with my hifiberry DAC2 HD and it took me months to find the fix. I believe the problem is related to the i2s bus. The bus was not correctly synchronizing the up to 3 i2c bus lines.

On the Raspberry Pi 4 I added the following to the /boot/userconfig.txt:

dtoverlay=i2smaster
dtoverlay=hifiberry-dacplushd (you would use the overlay for your sound card here. This should be in the /boot/config.txt when you installed the DAC but, just to be safe)

You can read up on i2s on wikipedia

After that I rebooted the pi and it has worked perfectly ever since.

One other note, the hifiberry/pi combination can be rather slow scanning your media directory especially if you are using the SDCard or USB. During that update time I have also seen the ALSA error. Word for thought. Good luck!