Hi all, I’ve recently discovered Volumio and I’m really excited about it. Only thing is that I have an issue when connecting using USB to my Audiolab MDAC.
I’ve installed Volumio x86 on two different mini PC’s (Intel NUC with J4005 and USB 3.0 and a Minix z64 with Intel z3735f with USB 2.0) but in both cases the audio output on my MDAC gives cracks and plopping sounds. On the display of the MDAC I can see the USB buffer going all over the place instead of around 50%, so asynchronous USB is not working correctly. I’ve tried different USB cables and played around with the buffer settings but no result. My conclusion is that it is most likely a driver issue.
In older threads, I found that changing some USB settings in the Boot/cmdline.txt fixed the issue, but when I SSH into the mini pc, I don’t see this file present.
Really hoping that someone recognizes this issue and is able to help me, would like to keep using Volumio
You may have to try our dev version as it supports more hardware than our standard version does (still has an old kernel).
You will find all the info and a link in section Volumio Development/ Development Talk/ “Next X86”.
Let us know if it made a difference.
Unfortunately that didn’t work, still USB buffer issues resulting in distortion of the audio. On the upside, this dev version did fix the wifi issue of the minix z64, fully functioning now.
Volumio operates well with the MDAC on an RPI3 based platform, sorry I’ve never tried Volumio on an X86 platform so cannot offer much help.
Generally MDAC has issues with newer USB3.0 ports (USB3.0 host IC’s do not support the lower bandwidth USB1.1 interface very well without experiencing dropped USB frames).
We have designed a streamer for my designs - while the electronics is good , we are struggling with the chassis vendor so the design is sitting on the shelf (well in fact built PCB’s are sitting on the shelf waiting for a chassis)!
Still very happy with my MDAC and I’ve always remembered you saying that the USB input is the preferred input to use, so really trying to make that work.
But you’re saying that connecting the MDAC to a Pi 3b+ with USB should work with Volumio? I’ve read about the Pi sharing it’s USB controller with ethernet resulting in degraded USB performance. Is that not an issue? Because of this I have also been considering getting a Digione hat for a Pi with coax digital output to connect that to the MDAC. But then again, the USB input was the preferred way for the MDAC.
Well, all this if I can’t get it to work on x86, it really sounds quite good except for the cracks. Waiting for the powered usb hub atm which is usb 1.1 backward compatible, supports linux and has its own EHCI, hopefully that works.
