New reworked driver for Wolfson/Cirrus Logic audio card

Thanks for updating this! I'll try it today and come back with a feedback.

[edit]

I just saw  that this is for kernel 4.9.  rpi-update will just update to 4.4.38. Should I try installing it on this version?

[edit2]

I'm back with some feedback.

At first I've tried to compile from source but for some reasons the sound card was not shown although the compilation was successful. I did not try the second time as it takes a loooot of time. What I did instead was to use your binaries directly and it worked meaning that I had audio on output.

I've notices that in  dmesg I get some errors:

[    2.450796] systemd[1]: Starting Encrypted Volumes.
[    2.491344] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c52e
[    2.491355] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[    2.491362] usb 1-1.4: Product: USB Receiver
[    2.491369] usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: Logitech
[    2.513696] input: Logitech USB Receiver as /devices/platform/soc/3f980000.usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.4/1-1.4:1.0/0003:046D:C52E.0001/input/input0
[    2.576217] hid-generic 0003:046D:C52E.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Keyboard [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-3f980000.usb-1.4/input0
[    2.583759] input: Logitech USB Receiver as /devices/platform/soc/3f980000.usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.4/1-1.4:1.1/0003:046D:C52E.0002/input/input1
[    2.646054] hid-generic 0003:046D:C52E.0002: input,hiddev0,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-3f980000.usb-1.4/input1
[    3.319367] systemd-udevd[143]: starting version 215
[    3.702546] gpiomem-bcm2835 3f200000.gpiomem: Initialised: Registers at 0x3f200000
[    3.854333] arizona spi0.1: Failed to get mclk1: -2
[    3.854351] arizona spi0.1: Failed to get mclk2: -2
[    3.854826] LDO1: supplied by RPi-Cirrus 1v8
[    3.864272] arizona spi0.1: WM5102 revision C
[    3.890200] Adding alias for supply MICVDD,(null) -> MICVDD,spi0.1
[    3.890723] Adding alias for supply MICVDD,(null) -> MICVDD,spi0.1
[    3.890730] Adding alias for supply DBVDD2,(null) -> DBVDD2,spi0.1
[    3.890736] Adding alias for supply DBVDD3,(null) -> DBVDD3,spi0.1
[    3.890743] Adding alias for supply CPVDD,(null) -> CPVDD,spi0.1
[    3.890749] Adding alias for supply SPKVDDL,(null) -> SPKVDDL,spi0.1
[    3.890755] Adding alias for supply SPKVDDR,(null) -> SPKVDDR,spi0.1
[    3.908398] MICVDD: supplied by RPi-Cirrus 1v8
[    3.913997] snd-rpi-cirrus soc:sound: ASoC: CODEC DAI wm5102-aif1 not registered
[    3.924215] snd-rpi-cirrus soc:sound: ASoC: CODEC DAI wm5102-aif1 not registered
[    3.929051] wm8804 1-003b: revision E
[    3.930445] snd-rpi-cirrus soc:sound: ASoC: CODEC DAI wm5102-aif1 not registered
[    4.090662] snd-rpi-cirrus soc:sound: wm5102-aif1 <-> 3f203000.i2s mapping ok
[    4.124437] usbcore: registered new interface driver brcmfmac
[    4.250137] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p2): re-mounted. Opts: (null)
[    4.280279] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware version = wl0: May 27 2016 00:13:38 version 7.45.41.26 (r640327) FWID 01-df77e4a7
[    4.321667] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_reg_notifier: not a ISO3166 code (0x30 0x30)
[    4.498695] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_reg_notifier: not a ISO3166 code (0x30 0x30)
[    4.765902] systemd-journald[141]: Received request to flush runtime journal from PID 1
[    5.403864] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
[    5.403874] brcmfmac: power management disabled
[    6.048178] uart-pl011 3f201000.serial: no DMA platform data
[    6.311183] Adding 102396k swap on /var/swap.  Priority:-1 extents:2 across:217084k SSFS
[    6.636395] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0 eth0: hardware isn't capable of remote wakeup
[    8.120974] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0 eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0xCDE1
[   10.458792] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[   10.458918] NET: Registered protocol family 31
[   10.458924] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[   10.460116] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[   10.460140] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[   10.460185] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[   10.468484] Bluetooth: HCI UART driver ver 2.3
[   10.468498] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol H4 registered
[   10.468503] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol Three-wire (H5) registered
[   10.468707] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol Broadcom registered
[   10.666681] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[   10.666690] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[   10.666708] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[   39.934339] random: crng init done
[ 2744.08356/5] bcm2835-i2s 3f203000.i2s: I2S SYNC error!

do you know why?

Another thing I would like to "route" from line in to line out is this possible using the "usecase" scripts?

If you want I can try again the compilation if you want to be sure that this works on a different machine.

Thanks!

[edit3]

I've just found how to route.

sudo ./Cirrus_listen.sh line line

Hi Alex, thanks a lot for your feedback!

I just saw that this is for kernel 4.9. rpi-update will just update to 4.4.38. Should I try installing it on this version?

Yes, this is fine. The reason for running rpi-update is to get a recent gpu firmware version.

At first I've tried to compile from source but for some reasons the sound card was not shown although the compilation was successful. I did not try the second time as it takes a loooot of time. What I did instead was to use your binaries directly and it worked meaning that I had audio on output.

It's hard to tell what went wrong but my guess would be missing to install the dtb and dtbo files and/or modules. If you still have the compiled tree you could try reinstalling it, it should work just fine.

I've notices that in dmesg I get some errors:

[ 3.913997] snd-rpi-cirrus soc:sound: ASoC: CODEC DAI wm5102-aif1 not registered
[ 3.924215] snd-rpi-cirrus soc:sound: ASoC: CODEC DAI wm5102-aif1 not registered

You can ignore these, they come from the kernel deferred probing mechanism. It just means that bcm2835-i2s hadn't been loaded/initialized by the time the kernel tried to load/init the sound card driver.

sudo ./Cirrus_listen.sh line line

BTW: you can omit "sudo", running the alsa mixer scripts should work fine as a normal user.

so long,

Hias

Thanks Hias for the reply,

I have another questions as I am quite new to alsa.

I get sound only when I test it via command line using for example

mplayer -volume 100 file.flac

I've tried some things like running rpi3 with pixel, emulationstation(retropie) and kodi but have some issues as I do not have sound.

I've disabled the default sound card.

I think it has something to do with the mixer and I think I have to update

/etc/asound.conf

but I don't know whith what. amixer is returning a lot of entries.

Do you know how to "fix" this?

Thanks!

Usually you shouldn't have to change /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc.

Could you post the output of

aplay -l

BTW: in case of kodi make sure you select the RPi-Cirrus card in audio settings, default usually is to play back via HDMI only. Also make sure you have MMAL video acceleration enabled - OMX can't output to ALSA.

so long,

Hias

aplay -l returns

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: RPiCirrus [RPi-Cirrus], device 0: WM5102 AiFi wm5102-aif1-0 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

BTW: in case of kodi make sure you select the RPi-Cirrus card in audio settings, default usually is to play back via HDMI only. Also make sure you have MMAL video acceleration enabled - OMX can't output to ALSA.

You are right about kodi, I remember I did this last time with the previous driver and it worked I do not have it yet installed yet.

I had raspbian lite installed with retropie and I got issues like

VolumeControl::init() - Failed to find mixer elements!

and as far as I understood emulation station assumes that the default alsa mixer is PCM, that's why I was thinking that /etc/asound.conf has to be updated. Somehow I have to point out which is the right mixer.

Having this I said that I should first get the normal raspbian working so I've flashed raspbian lite again and it worked from command line as shown below and afterwards I tried it also on full raspbian with the new pixel desktop and again the volume control is not working and trying to play anything from GUI fails, for example Chronium crashes. I tried to figure out which is the correct mixer but I get a long list.

In general I would like to be able to route from line in to line out as I want have a vinyl player connected to it. I want to use it as my main media player(most probably kodi) and optional I would like to play around with retropie.

Hias,

Thanks for the comment about ALSA not working with OMX! My card was working 2 days ago but I didn't know it while using OMX to test. But now my RPi2 is updated to Jessie and the audio card is working!!!

Also thanks for ALL the work you have done on the updates!

Thanks,

Kevin

Chromium crashing with kernel 4.9 is a known issue and should be fixed in a future chromium update. Read more about it (and a workaround for the issue) here in the official 4.9 kernel thread:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=167934

I did a quick test on the current Jessie release (with pixel desktop) and VLC played fine, chromium started with --no-sandbox was also able to play a youtube video.

The main control for the lineout volume would be "HPOUT2 Digital". Make sure you don't set it to more than 50% or you'll get clipping (that control can also be used to boost very low volume signals). As an alternative you can change your ~/.asoundrc and use the softvol plugin to create a sofware "PCM" mixer control - but note that this'll affect only the PCM output from the RPi, not any other signals (like linein) that you mixed into the lineout signal:

pcm.!default {
    type            softvol
    slave.pcm       "plughw:RPiCirrus"
    control.name    "PCM"
    control.card    RPiCirrus
}

I'm not sure about the issues you've seen with retropie/emulationstation. I'm using emulationstation on LibreELEC (from the gamestarter addon) and it worked fine out of the box (only had to disable onboard sound which was automatically enabled by the addon), didn't see any issues about non-existent mixers.

so long,

Hias

Chromium crashing with kernel 4.9 is a known issue and should be fixed in a future chromium update. Read more about it (and a workaround for the issue) here in the official 4.9 kernel thread:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=167934

I did a quick test on the current Jessie release (with pixel desktop) and VLC played fine, chromium started with --no-sandbox was also able to play a youtube video.

The main control for the lineout volume would be "HPOUT2 Digital". Make sure you don't set it to more than 50% or you'll get clipping (that control can also be used to boost very low volume signals). As an alternative you can change your ~/.asoundrc and use the softvol plugin to create a sofware "PCM" mixer control - but note that this'll affect only the PCM output from the RPi, not any other signals (like linein) that you mixed into the lineout signal:

pcm.!default {
    type            softvol
    slave.pcm       "plughw:RPiCirrus"
    control.name    "PCM"
    control.card    RPiCirrus
}

I'm not sure about the issues you've seen with retropie/emulationstation. I'm using emulationstation on LibreELEC (from the gamestarter addon) and it worked fine out of the box (only had to disable onboard sound which was automatically enabled by the addon), didn't see any issues about non-existent mixers.

so long,

Hias

Has anyone reported issues with wifi connectivity/throughput with the 4.9.0 kernel? I am losing wifi ability to get to internet, remote into the RPi2 from a laptop, and lose streaming from minidlna server about every 5-30 minutes. It doesn't actually disconnect me from the router but it doesn't seem to let me access anything until I disconnect wifi and re-connect.

I am running a Rasp Pi2 with the latest Jessie installed. I updated to Jessie before trying to compile the 4.9.0 kernel. The kernel update worked as the audio card was working, but shortly afterward I noticed the loss of wifi. I have read on internet about wifi connectivity issues with RPi and Jessie but with 12 hours to days between losing wifi. I am not getting that long of a span.

I am still fairly new to the Rasp Pi/Linux. So this is most likely something I have messed up, but I was curious if anyone else had seen an issue with wifi?

But after trying to isolate which software may be causing the issue by removing them, I finally went back to an image I had just before updating to 4.9.0 kernel. Wifi does not seem to be acting up.

Thanks,

Kevin

Hi Kevin!

I can't comment on the WIFI issues, I'm only using wired network with the RPi 3 here.

But if you are having problems with kernel 4.9 it would be best to switch to the official RPi firmware (just to be sure), test with that and then report issues/regressions in the RPi kernel 4.9 thread https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=167934 - if there's some regression it'll hopefully be fixed soon and then I can pick up the fix in my Cirrus builds.

If the issues are only present in my builds but not in the official RPi kernel please post about it here.

To switch from the Cirrus kernel to the official one run the following 2 commands (the first one forces rpi-update to "forget" about the currently installed kernel, overwriting the kernel with the Cirrus build doesn't play nice with rpi-update and it may think the latest version is already installed - if /boot/.firmware_revision is removed it'll start from scratch and get the latest official revision)

sudo rm /boot/.firmware_revision
sudo BRANCH=next rpi-update

Once you are finished with testing you can just reinstall the Cirrus kernel (re-run the sudo tar zxf ... command).

so long,

Hias

So use the pre-compiled kernels? I have been compiling them but that takes a little over 3 hours.

That was a quick response! Thanks.

I will let you know how things go.

Kevin

Well when I went back to the official kernel, the wifi issue went away as far as I can tell but of course the audio card no longer works either. It will be hard for me to explain the issues I see when using the new 4.9 kernel. I used iperf to try to get a measurement for wifi speed. But it didn't seem to change. The speed test was showing the speed to stay about the same even when it was bogging down on my screen when remote accessing the RPi2 with RealVNC. My best test is watching a movie using minidlna on RPi2 to play to Roku stick's media player. Sometimes the movie will start playing normally but then the media server loses connection after 10 minutes or so. The time it lasts varies from just a few minutes to half hour or so. Most recently the server isn't disconnecting but the movie has to buffer(which it normally never did) every couple of minutes which leads me to believe the transfer rate over wifi is low, but the iperf test seemed to show that it was still about the same(800MBs/sec, I think).

Would you recommend using one of the previous versions of your kernel? Do you think that would possibly get me a more stable wifi connection?

Thanks,

Kevin

Hi Kevin!

One thing you could try is using my kernel, but disable the Cirrus overlay in config.txt and check if this helps. It's best to completely power down the RPi and unplug power before you test (so the card is completely in cold state). With such a configuration the kernel should behave exactly the same as the official 4.9 kernel.

You could also try a 4.4 series kernel with the cirrus drivers, but you'll have to compile it from source, the latest precompiled 4.4 kernel I've uploaded to my website is already about half a year old and there might have been wifi fixes in the meantime - the latest 4.4 cirrus source on github is a little bit newer.

Also test with the official 4.4 kernel and see if that works.

I have to add that I currently have no idea what could be causing wifi issues in my cirrus tree - it only adds the sound card driver, the rest of the kernel and config is completely identical.

Intermittent WIFI issues can be a real PITA to track down and it's rather easy to follow a wrong path. So best concentrate on trying to replicate the issues with the official kernel, doing exactly the same things you did as with the cirrus kernel (eg streaming video, outputting to HDMI instead of the cirrus card).

so long,

Hias