ES9023 i2s dac - very low and distorted sound

[bobbyprajan]

Was testing some old stuff in my junk collection. Managed to get Ubuntu 20.04 working on an Odroid C1+ (end of life). Installed LMS 8.3.0 after some struggle. The ES9023 is detected and squeezebox -L lists the dac. However the audio is very low and there is a lot of distortion in the output. I can hear music only if I put my ear next to speakers and amplifier at full volume. The LMS and squeezelite are fine, as they do play if I connect a USB dac

The i2s connections were made as documented here. Not much information from google search

Any idea what could be the issue

 

[mbhangui]

Was testing some old stuff in my junk collection. Managed to get Ubuntu 20.04 working on an Odroid C1+ (end of life). Installed LMS 8.3.0 after some struggle. The ES9023 is detected and squeezebox -L lists the dac. However the audio is very low and there is a lot of distortion in the output. I can hear music only if I put my ear next to speakers and amplifier at full volume. The LMS and squeezelite are fine, as they do play if I connect a USB dac

The i2s connections were made as documented here. Not much information from google search

Any idea what could be the issue

Execute the terminal command and then in the terminal, execute the command

alsamixer

You will get a screen like this. You might need to press F6 to select your dac. Have the master control to the full use the left-right arrow key to select the control and up arrow key to increase the volume

Also if you are going to the device through pulseaudio, you might not be getting the full sound. Pulseaudio always does resampling. Chose the hw: device for squeezlite.

I will later turn on my RPI and tell you how to chose the hardware device directly instead of going through pulseaudio.

Below is the screenshot of alsamixer on my macbookpro running fedora linux and which uses Cirrus Logic CS4206 dac. Your screen will be little different with different controls.

 

[bobbyprajan]

Execute the terminal command and then in the terminal, execute the command

alsamixer

You will get a screen like this. You might need to press F6 to select your dac. Have the master control to the full use the left-right arrow key to select the control and up arrow key to increase the volume

Alsamixer after selecting the dac with F6 says ¨This sound device does not have any controls¨. I dont remember if it was like this earlier. The HDMI audio device also shows the same message when selected in alsamixer

Also if you are going to the device through pulseaudio, you might not be getting the full sound. Pulseaudio always does resampling. Chose the hw: device for squeezlite.

I will later turn on my RPI and tell you how to chose the hardware device directly instead of going through pulseaudio.

Pulseaudio is not installed, this is an ubuntu minimal install. I could not hear anything with speaker-test also

 

[mbhangui]

Alsamixer after selecting the dac with F6 says ¨This sound device does not have any controls¨. I dont remember if it was like this earlier. The HDMI audio device also shows the same message when selected in alsamixer

Pulseaudio is not installed, this is an ubuntu minimal install. I could not hear anything with speaker-test also

The dac really may not be having any control. DO the following to directly play a wav file to the alsa device.
aplay -l will lists the devices. Locate the device for your dac. Then do the following if your dac device is hw:0,0


cd /usr/share/sounds/alsa
aplay -D hw:0,0 Front_Left.wav
aplay -D hw:0,0 Front_Right.wav

If this doesn't play clear, then you have a problem

 

[bobbyprajan]

The dac really may not be having any control. DO the following to directly play a wav file to the alsa device.
aplay -l will lists the devices. Locate the device for your dac. Then do the following if your dac device is hw:0,0


cd /usr/share/sounds/alsa
aplay -D hw:0,0 Front_Left.wav
aplay -D hw:0,0 Front_Right.wav

If this doesn't play clear, then you have a problem

It does not play, will dig more

Thanks

 

[jaiwant_alex]

this is an ubuntu minimal install

This could be the problem. If I recall correctly you need a few more packages over the minimal install (alsa-utils? alsa-oss? Gstreamer ? ) for alsa to function properly. (Sorry for the vague reply, I'm just an enthusiastic linux user, not actually knowledgeable)

 

[bobbyprajan]

This could be the problem. If I recall correctly you need a few more packages over the minimal install (alsa-utils? alsa-oss? Gstreamer ? ) for alsa to function properly

A usb dac plays music without any issues. If it was an alsa issue, the usb dac also would also not play. I am wondering whether the i2s interface of the C1+ itself is faulty as I was able to find another i2s dac and tried it with the same result

I plan to setup a raspberry pi to rule out any issue of the i2s dac.

I'm just an enthusiastic linux user

Same here. Thank you for your inputs