I love Plexamp - a lot. On my phone and desktop the software works without flaws.
I have two raspberry pi headless installations of Plexamp, and both have now a problem that does not allow me to play any music. I have even wiped and reinstalled one of them to see if it solved the problem.
The issue:
The Pi players refuse to play content. There is an eternal spinning wheel, playlists do not load.
My attempts to resolve the issue:
After lookin online, I found a similar symptom caused by an incorrect audio channel - I changed the HiFiBerry cards to the standard HDMI, saved, and tried again - same result, returned the output to HiFiBerry and still no result.
So it is HiFiBerry causing the issue? This is new. It used to work really well. Actually, I purchased the HiFiBerry DAC (for connecting the headphones), and the HiFiBerry Digi for connecting to my amp via Toslink based on this post Plexamp Gapless playback over Chromecast Audio? - #2 by elan
The USB dac does not sound like a solution for my amplifier connection. I’ll keep tinkering with the system until it works again - or, I will have to get something else installed (I really hope not, Plexamp in itself is amazing, and I want to keep using it).
As an FYI - a small test for the HifiBerry hardware - I installed HifiberryOS, reinstalled the ol’ Squeezebox Server, and all is running.
To be clear - I really like Plexamp and would love to get it running again. Unfortunately, the script provided by @odinb1 does not work on HifiberryOS, nor is Plexamp a native feature in HifiberryOS.
I will be reinstalling the Plexamp as soon as the issue can be resolved. Surely there are other Hifiberry users on this forum? If I am the only one with an issue, I must be doing something wrong.
@mattkoop :
You are doing nothing wrong, this is a HW-problem with the RPi vs the HifiBerry.
The FAQ on the GitHub has the following information about this issue:
Q: My HifiBerry card (or clone) is not detected after installation and reboot with aplay -l command, what could be wrong?
A1: Sometimes the card is not detected after upgrade, try doing a hard reboot, i.e. pull the power-cable for 10 seconds and then re-insert power to boot. Card should now be detected. If needed, go to: Settings (cogwheel lower right corner) >> Playback >> Audio output >> Audio Device and re-select your audio-card.
A2: On your Raspberry Pi, run the following command: cat /proc/device-tree/model. If it says “Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.5”, the HifiBerry card might not work as expected. The new Pi release uses a new power management circuit that doesn’t ramp up the voltages as clean as all previous versions did. This results in an inconsistent state of the circuit and the HifiBerry card isn’t detected by the Pi anymore.
Note that this affects only the Digi+ Pro and Digi2 Pro (and some clones of these cards).
So, getting a “beefier PSU” (or just different one) could fix the issue if lucky. Getting a different or newer version of the Hifiberry card could fix it, or and older version of the RPi.
if your combination of HAT’s and Pi’s is currently working with Hifiberry OS, the problem might be something other than the h/w issue described by @odinb1 ('tho i was thinking the same thing when you shared the Pi board rev, and i currently don’t have a better hypothesis)
your original post reads like this setup previously worked for you with Pi OS and Plexamp? if that’s correct, did it stop working after a system/OS update?
you might also try latest release of RoPieeeXL, which has Plexamp integration alongside other audio streaming options
Well, this hardware issue is a bit more complex than either it works or it does not. Depending on your PSU and grid, or the tolerances of your specific HAT and RPi, it could work sometimes, and then not at other times. So, just because it worked one time, or even several times with HifiberryOS does not mean it will work (or not work) consistently even with that OS. Getting a beefier PSU or one with better/larger capacitors could make it work more frequently, but no guarantees.
@elan - The USB audio directly from the Pi resulted in distortion on the amplifier (which does have a USB input).
@tgp-2 - yes, you are correct. Both R/PI with Hifiberry (one DAC, one Digi) have worked flawlessly fr a considerable time. It may be an OS update that messed up things. In which case, there would be others with the same issue, one would think. Thanks for the link to RoPieeeXL, I will check this out.
@odinb1 - not discounting power as a potential issue, I would think it would have been an intermittent issue all along? This is consistently not working - and I suspect it to be due to an upgrade of the R/PI OS (a hunch)
I appreciate all input here so far. RoPieeeXL seems to be the way forward to keep using Plexamp - I will post an update on the progress
@mattkoop
As you stated, the new kernel in RaspbianOS might be the culprit, or some other change to the OS after update. This might be why issue is appearing more frequently now. Without being able to replicate the issue, it is hard to say. You can try installing on an older RaspbianOS image, and then just not update the system! This might give an indication on if it is update-related or not.
If an appliance-like device is good enough, you might do what @tgp-2 suggested, and try running RoPieeeXL for a while to see if that works for you.
This completely solved all issues - not only is it super easy to install and configure - it works with Plexamp and Squeezebox Server alongside - solving the Podcast problem (I finally ditched the Chromecast audio)!
I was having similar issues as OP when I first installed Plexamp on my Pi. I ended up getting thru them. My USB DAC doesn’t like the USB3 ports on the Pi, but works great on the old USB2 ports. After that, everything was sort of fine, but not smooth. I also installed Mopidy to add in some streaming stuff. There was always some wonkiness with audio device selection, especially after reboots.
Long story short, I just installed Ropieee XL and I am blown away. I don’t even use Roon! But for Plexamp, it’s DEAD EASY. And for fun, I spun up an LMS docker on my home server to enable the Pi as a Squeezelite streaming client. This is exactly the sort of use case that Plexamp needed, IMHO. An appliance or “box” for normies. This is definitely the way for anyone who wants a headless Plexamp box, and doesn’t want to futz around with the command-line.
