No driver for Pi DAC PRO for Pi 3

[edbarx]

Last September I purchased a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and an i2S DAC PRO hat. I am posting here because I cannot find a driver for this sound card. What I find are ready made installation images that I do not want. The reason for this unwillingness to use a ready made image, is because I want to set up my Pi the way I want it: I want a standalone media player that works from a terminal. I do not want to use ssh, this is unnecessary when there is physical access of the Pi. Moreover, I do not want to use other devices to access the media player: a keyboard and a monitor are more than enough.

I want to use a Devuan image for the Pi which I am actually using. Regrettably, I can only use the lower quality built in sound chip.

The installed kernel is:
Linux Devuan 4.16.14-v8+

This is the sound card:
http://iqaudio.co.uk/hats/47-pi-dac-pro.html

[edbarx]

Using locate to search for the necessary kernel modules I found they actually are installed but for some weird reason they are not loaded. The files are in the directory:

/lib/modules/4.16.14-v8+/kernel/sound/soc

Seeing they are installed I tried to use modprobe kernel-module to load them but failed. After that, I tried depmod -Ae kernel-module but failed again. Using depmod's -b for base directory resulted in an error complaining about the versions not matching.

These errors are telling me I am almost at a solution to this issue, but there is something escaping my understanding.

Any helpful ideas are most welcome.

[6by9]

I2s is not a plug and play interface, therefore you provide configuration via device tree.
The standard pi kernel is set up to support device tree overlays, and the hat specification stores the relevant config on an eeprom on the peripheral. If you've chosen some random other kernel build then that probably isn't working.

[edbarx]

I modified the /boot/config.txt file to include the line:
dtoverlay=iqaudio-dacplus

Rebooting did not load the relevant kernel modules and:
cat /proc/asound/cards

did not lost the i2S DAC.

I am using Devuan's kernel which is based on Debian's.

Manually invoking:
"modprobe module" without the .ko extension succeeded to load the relevant modules. However, the DAC continued to obstinately remain inaccessible.

Could you please, direct me to set it up?

[edbarx]

First of all sorry for the delay. I have been busy building and testing a custom amplifier. That is the good news. The bad news is I am still unable to use my Pi DAC PRO. The installation on the SD Card is a customized installation of Devuan for Raspberry Pi which I do not want to loose. In a previous, but misteriously deleted post, I was suggested to erase my current installation of Devuan and replace it with Raspbian. I am asking here because I would like to know what is causing the Pi 2B+ to fail properly loading the DAC's drivers and identifying it. I tried various hacks in /boot/config.txt but nothing worked. What succeeded was only disabling the Pi's on board sound hardware.

This Pi DAC Pro costed me more than the Pi 3B+ itself. Somebody should know what configuration files are involved and why the Pi 3B+ was hit with this regression bug. I found bug reports that describe closely what I have experienced with the Pi 3B+ and the Pi DAC Pro.

[fruitoftheloom]

First of all sorry for the delay. I have been busy building and testing a custom amplifier. That is the good news. The bad news is I am still unable to use my Pi DAC PRO. The installation on the SD Card is a customized installation of Devuan for Raspberry Pi which I do not want to loose. In a previous, but misteriously deleted post, I was suggested to erase my current installation of Devuan and replace it with Raspbian. I am asking here because I would like to know what is causing the Pi 2B+ to fail properly loading the DAC's drivers and identifying it. I tried various hacks in /boot/config.txt but nothing worked. What succeeded was only disabling the Pi's on board sound hardware.

This Pi DAC Pro costed me more than the Pi 3B+ itself. Somebody should know what configuration files are involved and why the Pi 3B+ was hit with this regression bug. I found bug reports that describe closely what I have experienced with the Pi 3B+ and the Pi DAC Pro.

http://www.iqaudio.com/downloads/IQaudIO.pdf

May I ask why you have not asked the manufacturer to support their product ?

http://www.iqaudio.com/downloads/

[edbarx]

I contacted the Pi DAC PRO hat manufacturers. They insisted they only support Raspbian, and did not give me details of what files are necessary to make their product work.

I installed Raspbian as instructed. Including the lines:

dtoverlay=iqaudio-dacplus
and
dtparam=i2c=on,i2s=on,spi=on

in /boot/config.txt made the OS recognize the Pi DAC PRO. However, my troubles are not yet over! Alsamixer is refusing to run with only the Pi DAC PRO enabled. Till now, I have NOT succeeded to listen anything from the Pi DAC PRO. Besides that, if the Pi's on board sound device is enabled and the Pi DAC PRO is also enabled, running alsamixer succeeds to run, and selecting the Pi DAC PRO inside alsamixer also succeeds, but no signal whatsoever is delivered from the Pi DAC PRO to the amplifier. This means there are still missing configuration files or entries even with the supported operating system.

[jamesh]

I contacted the Pi DAC PRO hat manufacturers. They insisted they only support Raspbian, and did not give me details of what files are necessary to make their product work. After almost a year of disappointment, I am starting to fear I will never be able to make it work. I tried to load the hat's drivers manually using modprobe. Although, I succeeded to load them, the hat remained inaccessible. With the drivers loaded, I then turned my attention to manually loading the hat's overlay file but the kernel complained it couldn't do so.

This is a nightmare, which honestly discourages me from suggesting the Pi as a music player. The manufacturers should have provided detailed workarounds for cases like mine.

After so many months pulling at my remaining age weakened hairs, I am being convinced that where the Pi is involved, there are no real experts. Troubleshooting seems to be predominantly done on a trial and error basis without attempts to understand the how and why.

Without understanding the causes of the problem, I am wasting my time and literally groping in the dark.

What?

Because a third party device isn't well suported by that thirdparty, you feel you cannot recommend the PI? Surely that should be that you cannot recommend the third party device? This is NOT the Pi's fault.

Not only that, but your insistence on using Devuan* is also a major cause of your problem. If you use Raspbian, the OS we develop and recomend, it will work. Again, nothing to do with us. We cannot and don't suport third party OS's.

You really cannot claim there are no Pi experts, there are loads. They all, of course, have their own subject areas.

* of course, this is entirely your choice and I am all for freedom of choice. So its actually your choice that is doesn't work. Don't blame others.

[LTolledo]

If Pi DAC Pro does not work, there are other I2S DAC units that work.

These are the ones on my possession (and being used)
1. iQAudio Pi DAC+
2. iQAudio Pi-DiGi Amp+
3. iQAudio Pi-DAC Zero
4. Pimoroni pHAT DAC
5. SainSmart PiFi DAC (hifiberry-dacplus clone)
6. Suptronics X400 v2.0
7. Suptronics X400 v3.0 (now fitted to this RPI3B+ am using to write to this forum)
8. I think there's another one with Toslink connector....

[AirFiero]

Wouldn’t the simplest solution be to buy another Pi? They’re only $35. I made a dedicated music player with a Pi Zero W, a DAC hat and headphone amp daughter board. It cost me less than a Pi 3B+

[edbarx]

After contacting the i2S DAC PRO (IQAUDIO) manufacturers helped me finally find a solution to this issue. The DAC is now recognized and I can play music with it. The solution was to use Raspbian. The latter, permitted me to remove systemd and use sysvinit. So, I am satisfied and contented.

One last question is what maximum current (Amperes) is used by the Raspberry Pi 3B+ when it is used to play music through an installed i2S DAC PRO (IQAUDIO)?