Wolfson drivers not in next Raspbian update

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?

Todd Cowley wrote:

 

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.

My desired setup is XBMC -> Wolfson DAC -> vintage Harman-Kardon receiver.  I've tried a $5 USB sound card and it didn't fulfill my needs for several reasons.  First, since it runs off the relatively dirty +5V from the Pi, this raises the noise floor to an objectionable level, unless you provide your own dedicated power supply for the USB DAC to run on.  Second, since it goes over USB, anything else that goes over USB and generates traffic on that bus (e.g. WiFi adapter, external hard drive) opens the possibility for contention, lag, and skips/pops.  (Hence distributions like Volumio that use the RT patch and are highly tuned to avoid this issue.)  The Wolfson card, as well as the HiFiBerry, communicate with the Pi using I2S, a dedicated channel that does not suffer from this issue.

Todd Cowley wrote:

 

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.

I'm not asking for a newer version of the kernel.  I'm asking for the driver to be in tree, or at least to see some progress toward that goal.

The issue preventing this from happening seems to be the quality of the driver.  From a kernel maintainer at http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=75895&hilit=wolfson :

"My main objection to these modules is 99% of users don't use them, they load by default which takes time and memory, and they mess with gpio lines and i2c which may affect users who are using the pins for other uses.  Ideally they would be "opt-in", perhaps with a raspi-config menu setting saying "Support I2S audio cards"."

In other words, the Wolfson driver doesn't play nicely with others, and that's why the maintainers won't merge it into tree.

To be honest, I'm really disappointed with the software support for this card.  In November of last year, Eddie Sinnott from Wolfson posted on this forum, "After a minor glitch with the hardware we've now got boards turning up at the warehouse in their thousands. Main focus now is on getting the software drivers to a level we're happy with before releasing. We're working closely with the Raspbian team as well as the team at Element14 and we'll keep you posted as soon as we have a firmer date."  They finally shipped in March, and I bought mine a month and a half ago with the understanding that better software support would soon be forthcoming, but that hasn't happened.  The Wolfson Audio card is really a great piece of hardware that's been let down by poor software support.

I feel your frustration but your mixing the two all together. The Raspbian images are supplied by the Foundation which has a goal of a teaching platform to be used as educational purposes. Adding a Sound Card by default conflicts with their goal. XBMC repo's are maintained outside of the Raspbian Updates and Packages. I use Raspbmc if the Foundation releases any update Raspbmc has to test and configure this then put out their own environment. If what Wolfson does release works with Raspbian there is no guarantee it will work with the Media Center Builds they then have to work to get it resolved. Ideally one package goes out and it works for everyone.

My post shows promise it does not help with delays or anything that can frustrate the end user:

Re: Wolfson drivers not in next Raspbian update

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.

I still have hope. Sometimes no word is good news it means so much time is spent getting it up and out posting theoretical dates and such is useless time spent. Do not I have yet to ever hear them promise, comment, commit that any intended use from their Viewpoint would be as an XBMC Sound Card. Wouldn't a more reliable choice have been an HDMI Audio Splitter? I ask even though I don't know if that would do what you intended. I am trying to review this card and in the past weeks have dug deep to see everything I can to give a non-biased review. I really feel that they have lived up to their promises which has been to do the best they can.

The card went out in March to a development platform the delay was due to them wanting to delivery a quality product. That is based on a chip used in smartphones to provide audio capabilities of in and out record voip, etc.. The last update is less than 30 days from both The Raspberry Pi foundation and Raspbmc of which Raspbmc stated he had contact with a developer at Wolfson that said patches are to come. Hold tight I hope it all works out in the end for everyone. But unfortunately we have a lot of trial and error on our end and all have a few products for the Pi that didn't necessarily live up to it's potential but for me those were products from last year.

I contacted Wolfson HQ and received this response today. Hopefully they have some good news coming. I will post again once I receive and update.

Hi Todd

Thanks for your email. I have someone in HQ working on response, and we aim to have it to you tomorrow.

Thanks!

Lynn Mason

Sales Administration Manager

Wolfson Microelectronics, Inc.

Todd Cowley wrote:

 

I contacted Wolfson HQ and received this response today. Hopefully they have some good news coming. I will post again once I receive and update.

 

Hi Todd

Thanks for your email. I have someone in HQ working on response, and we aim to have it to you tomorrow.

I wonder if the 'someone in HQ' is in Austin, Texas? Quite topical really, with Pfizer trying to take over Astrazeneca ...

My desired setup is XBMC -> Wolfson DAC -> vintage Harman-Kardon receiver.

You could try my experimental OpenELEC build:

http://www.horus.com/~hias/tmp/openelec-wolfson/

This is OpenELEC 4.0 with kernel 3.10.25 and the Wolfson driver plus the "use case" scripts and a few minor modifications so that the Wolfson card should work out of the box. I just uploaded a new build (20140514) based on the OpenELEC 4.0.1 release.

Please note:

This is an experimental build, although it works for me it could well have bugs.

Especially USB devices might be problematic due to the old kernel.

I don't think the Wolfson driver supports AC3 passthrough, maybe it does, but I can't test it - I'm using only an external stereo DAC.

so long,

Hias

Awesome, thank you so much!  I'll give it a try this evening and let you know how it works.

Best,

Ben

This seems very promising and projects upstream by end of June at the latest as that's the last day of Q2. Which should then allow all the Media Center Teams time to implement on their schedule which typically I don't think they sleep much. Hope this alleviates some of the stress and frustration anyone may be feeling. I hope to always give the benefit of the doubt with reputable companies that they hold true and won't release a statement like this unless they were 100% confident in it.

Hi Todd,

Thank you very much for contacting us with regards to the Wolfson audio card for the Raspberry Pi. We are glad to hear that you are a fan of the card and look forward to integrating within projects in the future.

With regards to the PR activity for the Raspberry Pi foundation our plans were to release the board with working software which we have now completed and in parallel work on up streaming the device drivers to the Raspberry Pi foundation. We are executing to this plan and will make our software available for up streaming in Q2 2014. I can confirm we are track to achieve this at present.

I hope you find the audio capability of the audio card exceeds your expectations, we have certainly found that it adds a completely new dimension to the audio possibilities of the Raspberry Pi. 

We would of course appreciate any feedback you would like to provide in advance of publishing your review for us to consider.

Best regards,

Wolfson team

Lynn Mason

Sales Administration Manager

Wolfson Microelectronics, Inc.

Santa Clara, CA 95050

Guys feel free to let me know. Direct Message here I prefer to support@raspians.com if you like please put Wolfson Audio Card (Whatever else) in the subject line and I'll start compiling and researching what is known vs what is yet to be revealed.

Put whatever as to what questions you may have as I can't test every single scenario or device. I'll put AC3 passthrough on the list. If you field other questions anywhere else or see other questions I would love the input.

Todd Cowley wrote:

 

This seems very promising and projects upstream by end of June at the latest as that's the last day of Q2. Which should then allow all the Media Center Teams time to implement on their schedule which typically I don't think they sleep much. Hope this alleviates some of the stress and frustration anyone may be feeling. I hope to always give the benefit of the doubt with reputable companies that they hold true and won't release a statement like this unless they were 100% confident in it.

I hope you are right. However we have been here before http://www.element14.com/community/message/107217/l/re-wolfson-modified-noobs-raspbian-zipped-img-cannot-unzip-new-download#107217

In that post Andy Laing (I think from Element14) said;

"We are currently working with the developers at Wolfson and the RPI Foundation to get the drivers uploaded into the official Raspbian Kernel.

This download image is only ever intended to be a temporary measure, and we will be removing this image as soon as the Wolfson drivers are embedded into the official Raspbian kernel. Once complete, you will only need to do an "apt-get upgrade" to download the kernel drivers for this audio card.

We are expecting this work to be completed within the coming weeks and I will update this thread again once this is completed and provide instructions on how to update your standard Raspbian builds to install the new drivers and additional software needed to run the Wolfson audio card."

That was posted by Andy Laing on March 24th. Note he said that they were expecting the work to be completed 'within the coming weeks'. You would have thought therefore that 6 or 7 weeks later we should not still be waiting for something to happen, and with no further word from Wolfson or Element14 (until you prodded them).

I'd take 'within the coming weeks' to mean 2 or 3 weeks, not 6 or 7. Or indeed probably more weeks yet to come. That sounds like 'months' to me.

Works great, and to top it all off, my USB WiFi dongle works out of the box (I had to compile a kernel module for it before).  Thanks!

Works great, and to top it all off, my USB WiFi dongle works out of the box (I had to compile a kernel module for it before).  Thanks!