Anyout out there with an SMSL or RME USB DAC and a linux system?

[seashell]

In the D10s thread we've been looking into a problem in the way the hardware volume control is named by ALSA. Namely something is causing the ALSA mixer name to have a trailing space which causes various software to fail to communicate with it. This affects some Topping products with XMOS USB controllers and apparently some Realtek products as well though I don't have any specifics there.

I recall reading here that RME does not use the XMOS USB audio interface (I don't know if they use Realtek or something else) so I'm curious how their hardware mixer enumerates. This could help narrow down if it's a linux USB audio driver / ALSA issue or something in the Realtek / XMOS implementations.

SMSL does use XMOS usb controllers so it would be interesting to confirm that they show this problem as well.

So if anyone is up for a test could you run "aplay -l" to find the card number of your DAC and then amixer -c {that card number} and post what the mixer's name is?

Here's an example from the Topping D10s. Note the trailing space enclosed in the single quotes with D10s.

amixer -c 3
Simple mixer control 'D10s ',0
Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
Playback channels: Mono
Limits: Playback 0 - 127
Mono: Playback 83 [65%] [-44.00dB] [on]

I welcome reports from anyone with various USB DACs and linux to post your results and what version of linux you're running.

 

[KeithPhantom]

My Sanskrit (Mk. II) never showed problems with any Linux distribution I’ve used. It was plug-and-play always.

 

[seashell]

My Sanskrit (Mk. II) never showed problems with any Linux distribution I’ve used. It was plug-and-play always.

Thanks for the replay. Did those distributions use PulseAudio? I've found that PulseAudio just quietly switches to a software based volume control when it encounters this situation. So from the Desktop GUI perspective it seems all is well.

 

[KeithPhantom]

Yes, but I also forced ALSA (in Deadbeef) and it worked perfectly as well.

 

[seashell]

Yes, but I also forced ALSA (in Deadbeef) and it worked perfectly as well.

Interesting. That's an XMOS based USB interface according to the page on Amazon.

 

[seashell]

Hmm, I don't think the RME interface provides a volume control over the USB interface at all. Still open to reports about other DACs with USB volume controls.

 

[celroid]

So if anyone is up for a test could you run "aplay -l" to find the card number of your DAC and then amixer -c {that card number} and post what the mixer's name is?

This does not output anything for me with a SMSL SU 9. Running a VM with USB Controller passthrough.