Volumio 2 / RPi3 / Audiophonics ES9018K2M DAC / Spotify

Help and Support Help
1

Hello,
My setup is a follow :

  • RPi3.
  • Audiophonics ES9018K2M I2S DAC
  • Volumio 2.041
  • Spotify plugin

I’m experiencing the issue described hereafter https://volumio.org/forum/which-config-for-dac-es9018k2m-rpi-and-volumio-t5133.html when I try to play Spotify stream.
Sound is highly distorded.
The same issue occurs when Volumio plays welcome sound at boot. The welcome sound is also highly distorded.
ES9018K2M chipset seems to not handle 16 bit stream correctly without a dedicated driver. But such driver is not available, as far I know.
MP3 and internet radio stations are playing fine.

As my setup is working fine with Runeaudio 0.4 using RPI-DAC overlay as ES9018K2M driver, I would like to use the RPI-DAC overlay with Volumio 2 but it does not load at boot.
Here below the DMESG output showing RPI-DAC overlay loading error:

[    5.407138] snd-rpi-dac soc:sound: ASoC: CODEC DAI pcm1794a-hifi not registered
[    5.415408] snd-rpi-dac soc:sound: snd_soc_register_card() failed: -517                                                                                  
[    5.816426] snd-rpi-dac soc:sound: ASoC: CODEC DAI pcm1794a-hifi not registered                                                                          
[    5.824886] snd-rpi-dac soc:sound: snd_soc_register_card() failed: -517
[    5.842265] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_drivestrengthinit: No SDIO Drive strength init done for chip 43430 rev 1 pmurev 24
[    5.859214] usbcore: registered new interface driver brcmfmac
[    5.859251] snd-rpi-dac soc:sound: ASoC: CODEC DAI pcm1794a-hifi not registered
[    5.859256] snd-rpi-dac soc:sound: snd_soc_register_card() failed: -517

Aplay -l does not show other sound card but Rpi3 embedded analog and HDMI outputs.

Any advice to make RPI-DAC driver load correctly greatly appreciated.
Thank you for reading.

2

Up !
Anyone with knowledge in kernel to help me find a solution to this issue ?

3

From what I read on Roon forums…the 9018k2m from audiophonics has some issues.

Copied from roon forums :

“Received replacement DAC. With new DietPi installation it partially works now.
24bit playback with hifiberry DAC drivers is good, but 16 bit playback is noise with some music mixed in one channel.
No driver for ES9018K2M, and no workaround yet finalised to have serial drive of 24 & 16 bit sync for ALSA (=Roon).”"

4

Thank you for your input.
The situation stated by Janis on Roon forum is quite the same one I’m experiencing. Audiophonics is unable to provide support for this DAC.
As this DAC is playing fine 16 bit stream on Runeaudio with RPI-DAC overlay and is working out of the box with OSMC/Kodi, it should work with Volumio too.
That’s why I would like to test RPI-DAC overlay with Volumio but infortunately this overlay seems to be broken in Volumio 2.041.
So any help to fix RPI-DAC overlay issue in Volumio is welcome.