Wolfson drivers not in next Raspbian update

I have a HifiBerry and it's been supported for a while now, at least from the day I got mine, which was a couple of months ago.

That's quite admirable considering it was created around November of last year and began selling around December.

From my personal experience with it, I can tell you it just works with pretty much everything you throw at it, and it sounds pretty good too.

However, it's with some sadness I admit this but:

* Hifiberry doesn't sound as good as the Wolfson. The TI 5102 chip doesn't hold a candle to the Wolfson chipset.

* It struggles (and often fails) playing the 24/96k sampler music files that comes with the Wolfson card. First thought it was the SD card (Sandisk class 6) not being able to keep up, but the music plays fine on the Wolfson even with a slower SD card (Sandisk class 4). The Wolfson chipset must somehow be offloading the decoding and playing of hi-res music whereas the HifiBerry relies heavily on the CPU.

* Hifiberry doesn't have a headphone amp. You must get some sort of amplifer, headphone or otherwise, in order to hear its full potential.

* Nor does it have any sort of microphone input - no built-in DMIC, no line input, no SPDIF in/out, just an RCA out.

* Hifiberry's a bit more expensive (39 Euros = ~ 45 USD) than the Wolfson (34 USD).

That said, however, I am using the Hifiberry a lot more than the Wolfson at the moment because the driver works perfectly, and works well with other software (namely Pulse Audio), which speaks volumes of the importance of software, no matter how superior the hardware is.

So, is submitting a PR just a matter of formality, and not a technical hurdle? And if not in the next update, then when approximately we can expect the Wolfson driver to be incorporated? Finally, when it is incorporated, will it work like the HifiBerry driver? As a loadable kernel module that can simply be modprobed?

It is supported in the new release of XBMC Gotham Cheers!

Hi Paul Garcia

I have same problem

So

I need your help

Would you tell me how to setup XBMC Gotham?

Can I install raspbmc-2013-12-23.img first,and update the XBMC?

I search the XBMC

in this post

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=176043&page=80

wget -O xbmc-14-20140420-nc3.tar.gz http://goo.gl/tNRTO0 --no-check-certificate

pv xbmc-14-20140420-nc3.tar.gz | tar xzf - -C /home/pi/.upgrade

sudo cp /home/pi/.upgrade/xbmc-14-20140420-nc3/{fixup_x.dat,start_x.elf} /boot

ln -sfn /home/pi/.upgrade/xbmc-14-20140420-nc3/xbmc-bcm /home/pi/.xbmc-current

sudo reboot

so

my step will working?

Got this tweet from Raspbmc (Sam Narco) XBMC 13.0 "Gotham" for #Raspbmc is here: http://bit.ly/1fLMco1

So no need to do anything but get new image or update and existing Raspbmc install.

Has anybody actually tried this?  If so, could you summarize what needs to be done to make it work?  I just installed XBMC Gotham this evening and was unable to get it to work with my Wolfson card.

I'll keep looking for links. What is your desired setup with XBMC? Just curious as a $5 USB Sound card card can deliver the same audio quality out. Here's a good understanding of what this card is compared to a USB sound card. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU-JMVkbCP8&feature=youtu.be I am working on a write up as we speak and testing it out.

I did see this post on Raspbmc from 4/14/2014 so it is coming I would follow this post and possibly recommend Raspbmc as it the only build I am aware of that is building in support. Please let me know if the other builds also offer support or intend to Raspbmc  » New Raspbmc update!

I’m adding support for the following sound cards:

• Wolfson Microelectronics Raspberry Pi Module – Wolfson’s patches for this had issues, so I’ve done my best to manually resolve these myself. I have reached out to a developer at Wolfson who tells me patches will be released in the future.

Here is the best solution I can find

The Wolfson audio card doesn't work with the official raspberry pi kernel, and their patches don't apply to the current kernel tree (you have to apply them to a tree from before Christmas).I think your only possibility is to use the supplied sdcard image they distribute, and then follow this:http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewto...61#p520212to get raspmbc working. Note, this is a hack and you will find things that don't work (e.g. updates), but I don't think there is a better solution for now.

Post found How do I get a wolfson audio card working in Raspbmc?

Element14 or Woolfson Do you have a comment on this. At the moment I cannot use the card I bought as I need to run it with the current Kernel.

I think in order to be of any assistance what requirements do you exactly need. What benefits over the older Kernel would you receive vs building it off the newer Kernel. (Note newer Kernel does not always equate to making your project better. Need to see what improvements were made.) Yes there does need to be integration into the default Raspbian images, etc.. But there are almost always options available through a Google search where work outside an official release results in what you need.

By defining why you need to run it with the current Kernel they can answer if any updates that do come out will address your particular need.