USB Volume between RPI and Caiman II

[Alp]

I have recently been playing with an old Raspberry Pi B that I had kicking around. So that it would work with my SB Touch and SB Radio I chose the piCorePlayer image. Quite quickly I got this working feeding my Caiman II DAC via USB (I don't have a Hifiberry Digi board with optical/coax outputs). It sounds pretty good but, compared to the volume output from my SBT, the RPi volume is somewhat less than half that of the SBT. Both players are set to have fixed max. volume output and the rest is all digital, isn't it? The output volume from the SBT is the same via optical or coax, so why the USB output from the RPi differs is a mystery to me. It is not clear if the cause of this is somewhere deep in the piCorePlayer ALSA settings or the Caiman II (which has Stans' upgraded chip). I will eventually buy a Digi board but fear I could have the same issue with that too.

Has anyone else come across this and have a solution?

Thanks!

[StanleyB]

When using the USB on the Caiman you need to manually set the volume control on your PC to MAX. (Adjustment is in the bottom right hand corner of your Windows screen.) The reason for that is that the USB chip in the Caiman was designed to accept several audio commands that are embedded in the WASAPI format. I kept the volume control feature. I think that DACs like the MDAC and the V-DAC1 have also been programmed to accept a number of those commands, which makes it possible to operate media players on a PC from the comfort of the remote control. But I digress. The point is that to set your media player and PC volume to the max, then try again.

[WAD62]

It is not clear if the cause of this is somewhere deep in the piCorePlayer ALSA settings or the Caiman II (which has Stans' upgraded chip). I will eventually buy a Digi board but fear I could have the same issue with that too.

Has anyone else come across this and have a solution?

Thanks!

I'm guessing that you've not been into the ALSAMIXER yet, apologies if you have...

You'll need to SSH into your Pi, via 'putty' or some equivalent software, you'll need the IP address of your Pi for this, and the ID and PW of whatever distro you've loaded...

Then go into ALSAMIXER and adjust the audio levels accordingly

I use PiCorePlayer which allows one to permanently save the ALSA settings using the following command...

sudo alsactl store

Hope this helps...

[Alp]

Many thanks for your replies. The problem was entirely on the RPi side and the solution - as Will kindly pointed out - was to go into alsamixer, select the output device (Digihug USB on my RPi) and adjust the volume (which was less than half). I then saved it by using sudo alsactl store. This ensures that when piCorePlayer or the RPi is restarted that the volume adjustments are kept. Now the output volume is the same whichever input I select on the Caiman II (USB from the RPi, Coax or Optical from the SBT).

[WAD62]

Many thanks for your replies. The problem was entirely on the RPi side and the solution - as Will kindly pointed out - was to go into alsamixer, select the output device (Digihug USB on my RPi) and adjust the volume (which was less than half). I then saved it by using sudo alsactl store. This ensures that when piCorePlayer or the RPi is restarted that the volume adjustments are kept. Now the output volume is the same whichever input I select on the Caiman II (USB from the RPi, Coax or Optical from the SBT).

...good stuff!