Volumio 3 Buster Beta for X86

Alright, here’s what I’ve encountered with a Dell Venue 8 Pro 5855, a no-name type c dock with PD/LAN/USB3/HDMI and a SMSL SU-9 DAC connected to it.

Installation to the internal eMMC works perfectly. The internal sound card doesn’t seem to work. When I select it, it shows me a ton of hardware mixers but all of them produce an error message. Didn’t look into it further as I’m only using my DAC for music.

USB audio with the SMSL SU-9:
This works fine for the most of it but I did ran in to an issue with MQA encoded music from Tidal. There were random dropouts causing the DAC to switch back and forward from MQA to DSD. I believed this had to do with timing issues so I did some tinkering after which I came to the following conclusions:

  • Adding “options snd-usb-audio autoclock=N” to the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf somewhat lessens the MQA playback problem but doesn’t solve it.
  • Disabling “C-States” in the bios solves the issue with MQA playback completely regardless of the autoclock setting. This makes me think it has to do with the CPU (or bus speed) throttling during playback. This might be fixed with some kernel options or ACPI settings.
  • The file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf contains “options snd-usb-audio nrpacks=1” which is deprecated and ignored as the DMESG output will show.

Suggestion/feature request:
I’ve noticed that it shows a local GUI on the tablet that actually works with the touchscreen which is very cool! Unfortunately it won’t rotate the screen by itself. It would be nice to have a setting that allows the user to rotates the screen. Perhaps my guide might be of help on how to implement this: [GUIDE] Touch screen rotation on Volumio 3

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series SoC Transaction Register (rev 34)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series PCI Configuration Registers (rev 34)

00:03.0 Multimedia controller: Intel Corporation Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series Imaging Unit (rev 34)

00:0a.0 Non-VGA unclassified device: Intel Corporation Device 22d8 (rev 34)

00:0b.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series Power Management Controller (rev 34)

00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series USB xHCI Controller (rev 34)

00:1a.0 Encryption controller: Intel Corporation Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series Trusted Execution Engine (rev 34)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series PCI Express Port #1 (rev 34)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series PCU (rev 34)

01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8260 (rev 3a)

inxi -Fxxxz
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LC_CTYPE = “UTF-8”,
LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale (“C”).
System:
Host: volumioemmc Kernel: 5.10.35 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A
Console: tty 0 dm: N/A Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Machine:
Type: Portable System: Dell product: Venue 8 Pro 5855 v: N/A
serial: Chassis: type: 8 serial:
Mobo: Dell model: 0N6T2F v: A00 serial: UEFI: Dell v: 1.12.0
date: 12/03/2019
Battery:
ID-1: TID2 charge: 17.9 Wh condition: 17.9/18.3 Wh (98%) volts: 4.2/3.8
model: Intel SR 1 SR Real Battery type: Li-ion serial:
status: Full cycles: 251
CPU:
Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Atom x5-Z8550 bits: 64 type: MCP
arch: Airmont rev: 4 L1 cache: 224 KiB L2 cache: 1024 KiB
flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 11520
Speed: 2148 MHz min/max: 480/2400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1440 2: 1684
3: 1820 4: 1895
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series
PCI Configuration Registers
vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:22b0
Display: server: X.org 1.20.4 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
tty: 80x24
Message: Unable to show advanced data. Required tool glxinfo missing.
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx Series
Imaging Unit
vendor: Dell driver: intel_atomisp2_pm v: kernel bus ID: 00:03.0
chip ID: 8086:22b8
Device-2: Thesycon System & Consulting type: USB
driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid bus ID: 1-1.2:3
chip ID: 152a:85dd
Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.35
Network:
Device-1: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: f000
bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 8086:24f3
IF: wlan0 state: down mac:
Device-2: Realtek RTL8152 Fast Ethernet Adapter type: USB driver: r8152
bus ID: 1-1.3:4 chip ID: 0bda:8152 serial:
IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac:
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 58.25 GiB used: 2.31 GiB (4.0%)
ID-1: /dev/mmcblk0 model: HCG8e size: 58.25 GiB serial: rev: 0x7
scheme: GPT
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 53.60 GiB used: 565.3 MiB (1.0%) fs: overlay source: ERR-102
ID-2: /boot size: 168.4 MiB used: 57.7 MiB (34.3%) fs: vfat
dev: /dev/mmcblk0p1
Sensors:
Missing: Required tool sensors not installed. Check --recommends
Info:
Processes: 171 Uptime: 29m Memory: 3.78 GiB used: 578.2 MiB (14.9%)
Init: systemd v: 241 runlevel: 5 default: 2 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 alt: 8
Shell: bash (sudo) v: 5.0.3 running in: tty 0 (SSH) inxi: 3.0.32

lsusb

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:8152 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8152 Fast Ethernet Adapter

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 152a:85dd Thesycon Systemsoftware & Consulting GmbH

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1a40:0801 Terminus Technology Inc.

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub