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  • Author Author: bharatrai888
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Road blocks to Karaoke

bharatrai888

Hi Friends,


In previous post I write about the use of raspberry with wolfson pi. I talked about the usage of the wolfson.


If talking about the karaoke which is our main target the raspbian fails as I already said in my starting post. Whereas the RaspBMC provide lag free music and video playback which is our main motto. As we all use it as karaoke which means using raspberry pi as media device.


So according to my experience and point of view the RaspBMC is best solution for this.


So for this I first backup my Raspbian data and restored my RaspBMC image which used to backup earlier.


And again it was the awesome feeling while playing lag free media.


Again going through each setting of raspbmc I also found the karaoke option inside the RaspBMC settings option.


At this point I enabled the option but while playing .kar file it fails.


Looking for the solution on the internet I found to put the soundfont.sf2 file and a blank timidity in the timidity folder which is located in ~/.xbmc/userdata/


I do the same but still it fails to open midi files. Looking inside the error log I compared it with the XBMC windows version logs. I found that there is no line containing timidity in the RaspBMC error log.


Other than that the initial idea which I have planned is working.


I am still searching for the proper solution which may help in playing midi files in RaspBMC.


Otherwise I’ll come up with initial idea to use raspberry pi as fully controlled karaoke machine.

  • in reply to bharatrai888

    So, I thought it a good idea to start over from scratch and take notes along the way in order to create a step-by-step guide.

    But this time it didn't work as straight-forward as it did yesterdayimage I don't know why. I have fiddled with a lot of things, but at long last I have sound from the Wolfson card again.

     

    What I have done:

    I have downloaded the kernel from http://www.horus.com/~hias/tmp/raspbmc-wolfson-140310.tgz into /home/pi

    Become root:

    sudo -s

     

    Make a backup of the original kernel:

    cd /boot

    cp kernel.img kernel.img.ORG

     

    Go to root directory and unpack the kernel:

    cd /

    tar xvzf /home/pi/raspbmc-wolfson-140310.tgz

     

    Install the alsa-utils package:

    apt-get update

    apt-get install alsa-utils

     

    Become pi again:

    exit

    Create the init-wolfsonpi.sh symbolic link in /home/pi. I use the LineOut jack , so I create the symlink pointing to that script.

    pi@raspbmc:~$ ln -sf wolfson-scripts/Playback_to_Lineout.sh init-wolfsonpi.sh

     

    The init-wolfsonpi.sh script is meant to be run automatically at boot by /etc/udev/rules.d/30-sound.rules

    but it doesn't work as intended. I have to run it by hand. But only once, the settings are kept between reboots since I have installed the alsa-utils package.

     

    I have created the file /home/pi/.asoundrc with this content:

    pcm.wolfson_pi_soundcard {

      type hw

      card sndrpiwsp

      device 0

    }

     

    pcm.softvol {

      type softvol

      slave {

      pcm "wolfson_pi_soundcard"

      }

      control {

      name "Master"

      card 0

      }

    }

    pcm.!default softvol

     

    I have created the file /home/pi/.xbmc/userdata/advancedsettings.xml with this content:

    <advancedsettings>

    <audiooutput>

      <audiodevice>ALSA:sysdefault:CARD=sndrpiwsp</audiodevice>

      </audiooutput>

    </advancedsettings>

     

    I have added the three lines in bold to /opt/xbmc-bcm/xbmc-bin/share/xbmc/system/advancedsettings.xml:

    <advancedsettings>

    <cputempcommand>/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp | sed -e 's/temp=\([0-9]*\).*/\1 C/'</cputempcommand>

    <gputempcommand>/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp | sed -e 's/temp=\([0-9]*\).*/\1 C/'</gputempcommand>

    <network>

    <cachemembuffersize>20971520</cachemembuffersize>

    </network>

    <imageres>540</imageres>

    <fanartres>720</fanartres>

    <video>

    <defaultplayer>omxplayer</defaultplayer>

    <defaultdvdplayer>omxplayer</defaultdvdplayer>

    </video>

    <audio>

    <defaultplayer>paplayer</defaultplayer>

    <streamsilence>false</streamsilence>

    </audio>

    <audiooutput>

      <audiodevice>ALSA:sysdefault:CARD=sndrpiwsp</audiodevice>

    </audiooutput>

    </advancedsettings>

     

    With these settings I get sound from the Wolfson card if I select HDMI as output. If I select Analog I get sound from the Rasberry's built-in 3.5 mm analog jack. I don't experience any noise.

    --

    Ragnar

  • in reply to Former Member

    Hi ragnar.jensen

    I have problem with the step you said.
    I downloaded the kernel/scripts and installed them and in setting of RaspBMC I also selected the HDMI for audio output.
    But also after that wolfson pi is not working moreover their is too much of noise from the default audio output port of the raspberry pi.

     

    Another thing is that you said to change the symlink /home/pi/init-wolfsonpi.sh, Sorry but I did not get it how to do this.

  • in reply to bharatrai888

    As I have never used RaspBMC I got curious.

    Googled around a bit and found this: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=176043&pid=1649244#pid1649244

     

    He has done the same thing as I did, extracted the kernel and modules to an archive.

    But he has also changed a couple of udev scripts, which seems to be XBMC specific (the default ones are the cause of the slow boot).

     

    Luckily I have a spare Pi and also an extra Wolfson card, so I set out to install RaspBMC for the first time in my life.

    I installed using the procedure for Linux described here: http://www.raspbmc.com/wiki/user/os-x-linux-installation/

     

     

    I downloaded his kernel/scripts and installed them, changed the symlink /home/pi/init-wolfsonpi.sh he describes to point to my Playback_to_lineout.sh script and rebooted. Using my or his kernel and his scripts, I have sound from the Wolfson card when I select "HDMI" for audio output in the RaspBMC settings.

     

    I have also found out that omxplayer doesn't seem to know anything about ALSA, you might have to use dvdplayer to get sound from videos.

     

    --

    Ragnar

  • in reply to cstanton

    Another thing I forgot to mention is that my wolfson pi is working on RaspBMC but using arecord and aplay. But no sound through wolfson when I play something using RaspBMC.
    Still working to find some solution.

  • in reply to bharatrai888

    Unfortunately I don't have the hardware in front of me at the moment to check the correct settings; but if you're having trouble with the RaspBMC installation and you have the time, the other way to attempt it is to have the Wolfson image from the element14 site, if you have it and know that it works, then build RaspBMC on top of it: RaspbianXBMC - Raspbian though it depends where the problem lies.

     

    Though I wonder if it's having a similar problem to Wolfson now working with pulseaudio and is outputting on the raspberry pi instead?