[PLUGIN] Audiophonics EVO Sabre

Plugins
25

@snuka It is horrible but I guess this is a Volumio Spotify plugin issue

26

Since I updated to the latest Volumio version and installed the EVO Sabre plugin my screen is not working anymore. It was with the custom image before.

27

Could you log in ssh and copy / paste me the service status so we can check what’s going on ?
Through SSH : sudo systemctl status evo_oled2.service

29

Well that’s odd. According to this output, the software is running as expected. Sorry for asking this, but are you sure you are using the correct device? It should look like this.

30

Haha sorry for my stupidity. If tried it with a raspdac mini lcd.

31

No problem.
3 Solutions for you (ordered by ascending complexity) :

1st option : You can find a “relatively” recent image for this here. Just flash it on a card and you are good to go.

2nd option : If you want the very latest version of Volumio, you can do a manual install on a standard Volumio image following those instructions.

3rd option : If you want it to work as a plugin (with options available in Volumio webUI), I have also been trying to build a Volumio plugin for the RaspDac Mini LCD. It has not been really tested nor deployed anywhere yet, but if you are a bit linux-savy and not afraid of reading a big documentation, you could give it a try.

Everyone else reading this, please do not use any of this on an Evo Sabre.

32

Having been through the process - taking many hours I have the following walk through comments:

  1. Point to instructions for setup of wi-fi of EVO sabre - this is nowhere to be found!
  2. A screen shot of the OLED screen after booting of EVO-sabre would help.
  3. Under 6 - put open a volmio account top of the list
  4. More empahsis needed (bold?) and explanation of "enable plug in test mode - there are many options on the screen - whicf are needed?
  5. Add that until 4 is compelte you will not see the "Audiophonics Evo Sabre "plug in under system hardware. Do NOT use the Audiophonics ON/OFF plug in - this is not the required plug in
  6. Befroe leaving the plug in screen click “enable”
  7. Reboot the EVO-sabre - the term “remote” is unhelpful
  8. Point to a online file to test (any relevant sound file)
    I hope these cooments may ghelp others?

Ian

33

So recently bought this Evo-Sabre. On the whole it’s a very good setup. However, whenever I try to play a 192Khz 24Bit FLAC (tried via both Tidal and Qobuz), while Volumio shows that it is getting the 192Khz track, the DAC OLED shows 96Khz. Seems that the track is being downsampled. Any ideas why is that? I thought the device is capable of 384Khz over I2S?

P.S. Downsampling is off in Volumio settings

Edit: Yeah, definitely downsampling. Here is what the outputput from /proc/asound/card2/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params looks like

access: RW_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 96000 (96000/1)
period_size: 1200
buffer_size: 9600

When on Volumio it is:

{“status”:“play”,“position”:0,“title”:“In A Sentimental Mood”,“artist”:“Duke Ellington”,“album”:“Duke Ellington & John Coltrane”,“albumart”:“https://static.qobuz.com/images/covers/49/62/0060254786249_600.jpg",“uri”:“qobuz://song/35031475”,“trackType”:“qobuz”,“seek”:141166,“duration”:257,“samplerate”:"192 kHz”,“bitdepth”:“24 bit”,“channels”:2,“bitrate”:“5590 Kbps”,“random”:null,“repeat”:null,“repeatSingle”:false,“consume”:true,“volume”:100,“dbVolume”:null,“mute”:false,“disableVolumeControl”:true,“stream”:false,“updatedb”:false,“volatile”:false,“service”:“qobuz”}

34

Found the culprit. It was the Fusion DSP plugin that downsamples to 96KHz in case someone has similar issue.

Edit: I must have enabled resampling there but then didn’t remember it.

35

FusionDsp doesn’t resample anything unless you activate resampling…

36

Yes, you are right - I must have accidentally enabled it. But was a pain to find that was what was causing it - until I happened to look at asound.conf.

37

resampling can’t be seen in asound.conf…

38

Hello !

not quite on subject but I would like to know if anyone else is getting popping sounds between each song change while using the spotify plug-in on the Audiophonics Sabre DAC ? Not a big issue but it would be nice to have silent changes :slight_smile:

PS. currently using the 4.0.2 version of the plug-in (4.0.4 had the same popping sounds) and the latest volumio distro.

39

Update: Called Audiophonics, who stated that the “pops / knacks” between songs is a known issue when the EVO-DAC is used with a direct connection over the I2S GPIO (pinout RPI-DAC) to the Raspberry Pi. Other connections apparently don’t have the issue but that kind of defies the whole idea of having the RaspiPi in the the same box as the DAC pcb.

According to Audiophonics there unfortunately seems to be no software fix.

So, the issue is not linked to the Spotify plug-in or in fact any other plug-in, playback system, etc.

40

Just thinking but If enough users of the EVO Sabre DAC call Audiophonics maybe they will release a fixed version of the EVO. In any event, the crackling sound between tracks is way more noticeable in Volumio + Spotify plug-in than in Dietpi + Spotify plugin… so, it leaves me wondering what the heck the real problem is ! Software or Hardware ???

41

Has anyone been successful in changing the default logo.logo file to display an alternative to the Audiophonics logo on startup? I would like to customise to it to say VOLUMIO

42

so, it leaves me wondering what the heck the real problem is ! Software or Hardware ???

Well a bit of both. Hardware was designed prior to pipewire being used so there has to be slight differences in the way blank spaces are handled between songs if there is a noticeable time delay without any data.

If you can hear a clicking effect on track change using the IIS connection, a quick and easy solution would be to use an USB cable between the Pi and the EVO board instead of the GPIO I2S since the XMOS USB chip has additional digital pre-filtering to handle this kind of situation.

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43

This is what I use to generate logos for our displays.

44

Thanks Olivier … this works perfectly!!

45

You could try using PiCore Player instead with the Python 3 code from Peter Sketch in the UK. It does not suffer from this problem as far as I know… give it a try GitHub - peteS-UK/EvoSabre-DAC-PCP: Script and extensions required to configure piCorePlayer 8 on a Audiophonics EVO-SABRE 2xES9038Q2M DAC

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