Audio: Way to disable HDMI or set USB as default?

[nikolas]

For me (with a rotel amp via usb) this works exactly as you describe. So for users who want the output to switch to HDMI when the USB device is gone, everything is fine with my setup.

Its just that I only have a USB device and it switches off all the time. So I would prefer moode to always revert to the last choice of output I made, rather than to have it override my choice and then I switch it back. I'm not trying to say that that's the same for the majority of users, so this is not about what moode should do by default - that's up to you anyway and works quite well. It just looks like some people are in a similar situation, so I was wondering whether there is any way for us to tweak it so that it does what we want, e.g. by storing the user's last choice somewhere and changing the output automatically when that source reappears.

It would be great to be able to do that, but by now I've thought about it so much that I remember to change the output whenever it doesn't work (and following abuelomg's experience, I won't give other family members access)

[Tim Curtis]

For me (with a rotel amp via usb) this works exactly as you describe. So for users who want the output to switch to HDMI when the USB device is gone, everything is fine with my setup.

Its just that I only have a USB device and it switches off all the time. So I would prefer moode to always revert to the last choice of output I made, rather than to have it override my choice and then I switch it back. I'm not trying to say that that's the same for the majority of users, so this is not about what moode should do by default - that's up to you anyway and works quite well. It just looks like some people are in a similar situation, so I was wondering whether there is any way for us to tweak it so that it does what we want, e.g. by storing the user's last choice somewhere and changing the output automatically when that source reappears.

It would be great to be able to do that, but by now I've thought about it so much that I remember to change the output whenever it doesn't work (and following abuelomg's experience, I won't give other family members access)

The challenge is that in the failure cases the USB DAC after being turned on or plugged back in never gets recognized by Linux and so there is no way to auto-reconfigure the audio output to this DAC.

I think @Nutul has this failure case and was going to do some investigation.

[nikolas]

Makes sense - that adds an additional step to the problem, since in that case one needs to "find" the device first. I guess both are about having the OS check up on the USB ports more than it currently does. I did have the problem of disappearing USB devices years ago, but it somehow disappeared a long time ago. I don't know whether it was a problem with moode, I thought it was a problem of the OS and/or the raspberry pi being underpowered. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know.

[bzspi]

Hello,

Same issue here. I have Panasonic PMX90 audio device with integrated DAC.
Pi is booted when hifi system is turned on (pi is supplied with the slot dedicated to USB keys input), but when I use the CD or radio feature of the hifi system, DAC is not available, so that at the next use with DAC turned on, Pi device is set to HDMI device as default.

I've tried to enforce this with a sed script in the rc.local but I think the operation is not done at the right time

Code:

sed -i s/default:vc4hdmi/hw:2,0/ /etc/alsa/conf.d/*

Also sometimes device is set as `plugw:2" sometimes as "hw:2". I'm not expert enough in alsa config to be sure of the inconvenients that might occur of setting always direct output.

@Tim Curtis Something like a checkbox to state that the device configuration is sticky and not link to the current state of the pi might be fine. I've tried to look at the code where it's done but haven't find it.

PS: what a great software/distribution is moode audio !

[Tim Curtis]

Fixed in upcoming release

[nikolas]

Perfect, thank you! I didn't see this for a few days, but just installed the update and it looks like the issue is solved (though I haven't done extensive testing). Thanks a lot for all your work, I really appreciate the music (and getting up from my sofa less now that the amp comes back)!

[Tim Curtis]

Perfect, thank you! I didn't see this for a few days, but just installed the update and it looks like the issue is solved (though I haven't done extensive testing). Thanks a lot for all your work, I really appreciate the music (and getting up from my sofa less now that the amp comes back)!

Glad that its working :-)

Did you leave the setting at the default of 1 minute?

[nikolas]

Sorry for being slow, I was traveling and didn't find time to try a few things. The fix makes it rediscover the amp by itself and if I switch on the amp in time, it doesn't switch to HDMI. So that's great, but if I remember to switch on the amp when it reboots, I seem to do so within one minute, so I left it at the default of 1 min, I didn't try the longer wait times (but would be happy to if that's useful). But if the pi restarts unattended for some reason or I completely forget about the amp, then I think it still switches to HDMI and never goes back. So then I still have to switch output manually. I guess that's harder to fix and its much less of an issue now that things run pretty stable, i.e. the pi doesn't restart that frequently (mostly when a kid pulls the plug) and when it doesn't work, its almost always the output (so I remember and don't try random, stupid things first).

Thanks a lot for your help with this and please let me know if it would be useful if I try the other settings!

[hatenick]

Hi all

I have exactly the same problem, and I have found a way to disable hdmi audio. I have RPI 5, if you have other version some things might change. I did not want to disable hdmi video.

1) Backup your config file

Code:

sudo cp /boot/firmware/config.txt /boot/firmware/save_config.txt

2) open the file /boot/firmware/config.txt via some editor and change manually

Code:

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d    ->  dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,noaudio=on  #disable hdmi audio
hdmi_force_edid_audio=1  ->  hdmi_force_edid_audio=0           #disable hdmi audio in case your tv/monitor ask specifically for it via EDID
dtparam=audio=on         ->  dtparam=audio=off                 #disable on board related audio if any

3) Or use the followings on the ssh console

Code:

sudo sed -i -e 's/dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d/dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,noaudio=on/' /boot/firmware/config.txt
sudo sed -i -e 's/hdmi_force_edid_audio=1/hdmi_force_edid_audio=0/' /boot/firmware/config.txt
sudo sed -i -e 's/dtparam=audio=on/dtparam=audio=off/' /boot/firmware/config.txt

4) Reboot

Code:

sudo reboot

Note that update of moOde might change things later, since the file is managed by it. So we might have to execute the steps again after an update. It would be beautiful if moOde could disable hdmi audio via some config.

By the way another more robust solution is to use card names instead of ALSA index'es but it needs to be fiddled with mpd conf and renderer's php files. Mpd can be handled with custom.conf file but others are hard coded to _audioout and that file is also overwritten.

Regards, and thanks for the phenomenal work on moOde.

@li

[Tim Curtis]

@hatenick, Have you tried the "Device ready wait" setting in Audio Config?