Budget Standalone "Toslink > DSP > Toslink" with Camilladsp. Set up instructions for newbies.

[PGH]

i see this card has analog input. In your alsamixer screenshot, i see the control at the right, capture is set to "line", does it allow you to set to "IEC958" or "toslink" or something like that?
Another suggestion. I am no expert, but from the screenshot it seems that camilladsp is just not receiving any signal. As it is now, do you get any sound if you plug a source to the analog inputs? just to troubleshoot...

In alsamixer I can toggle the PCM capture source in the middle of the window between ”IEC958 IN“ and ”Line In“.
Both options don’t give any input if I plug in a signal. Thanks for noting.
On my Mac both inputs on the interface do work.

 

[MCH]

In alsamixer I can toggle the PCM capture source in the middle of the window between ”IEC958 IN“ and ”Line In“.
Both options don’t give any input if I plug in a signal. Thanks for noting.
On my Mac both inputs on the interface do work.

I am sure there is a lot of troubleshooting that can be done. I recommend you to ask in the camilladsp tutorial thread:

RPi4 + CamillaDSP Tutorial

Intent of this thread is to provide a tutorial for setting up CamillaDSP on a RPi4. There is a lot of good information scattered through ASR, DIYAudio and the CamillaDSP GitHub but there also appears to be a lot of apprehension. My goal is to give concrete examples of how to use CamillaDSP with...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[PGH]

Simple fix, but not easy to notice:
As long as the camilladsp mixer outputs are muted, the input meters are not showing any input at all, and the dsp stays paused as well. (!!)

That’s what made me think there was no input signal. Even harder to notice the mixer mute function, because if the speaker symbol is lighted green means it’s muted.

So now everything works as expected.

 

[mdsimon2]

Simple fix, but not easy to notice:
As long as the camilladsp mixer outputs are muted, the input meters are not showing any input at all, and the dsp stays paused as well. (!!)

That’s what made me think there was no input signal. Even harder to notice the mixer mute function, because if the speaker symbol is lighted green means it’s muted.

So now everything works as expected.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. To me that behavior is unexpected. I could see it doing that if you muted the source channel but it is very odd that it does it when muting the destination channels.

I should also note that if you use the global mute it still shows the input levels.

Michael

 

[tiago.trindade]

In alsamixer I can toggle the PCM capture source in the middle of the window between ”IEC958 IN“ and ”Line In“.
Both options don’t give any input if I plug in a signal. Thanks for noting.
On my Mac both inputs on the interface do work.

I think I am experiencing a similar problem.

I get no "sound input" at all if I select the IEC958 IN as the input (I tried connect the S/PDIF cable directly on the DAC and there is sound coming from the Philips OLED TV thru optical - so the problem is on this setup ). If I disconnect and connect the optical cable I hear a "crack noise" in the moment before I fully connect the cable (so it is detecting something, but no sound at all)

If I select "Line"/"Mixer" I get some sound.

What should I do?

 

[MCH]

I think I am experiencing a similar problem.

I get no "sound input" at all if I select the IEC958 IN as the input (I tried connect the S/PDIF cable directly on the DAC and there is sound coming from the Philips OLED TV thru optical - so the problem is on this setup ). If I disconnect and connect the optical cable I hear a "crack noise" in the moment before I fully connect the cable (so it is detecting something, but no sound at all)

View attachment 256748

If I select "Line"/"Mixer" I get some sound.

View attachment 256749


What should I do?

Hi Tiago, what do you mean with "some sound"? The bars in your screenshot seem to indicate a normal signal in and out for a tv. If for some reason the signal from the tv is too low you can always apply a positive gain in camilladsp

 

[tiago.trindade]

Hi Tiago, what do you mean with "some sound"? The bars in your screenshot seem to indicate a normal signal in and out for a tv. If for some reason the signal from the tv is too low you can always apply a positive gain in camilladsp

Sorry, I was not very clear!

"some sound" = noise

In the meanwhile, I tested the same setup on Windows and have the same issue (the toslink input from the TV is not "translated" into sound when I record audio from this device on Windows). So, may I assume it is an hardware issue?

 

[MCH]

Sorry, I was not very clear!

"some sound" = noise

In the meanwhile, I tested the same setup on Windows and have the same issue (the toslink input from the TV is not "translated" into sound when I record audio from this device on Windows). So, may I assume it is an hardware issue?

Oh, could be you tv settings? Many tv can output stereo pcm and also 5.1 over toslink. You need to select the first. If not this, i would suggest to plug your tv directly to a toslink DAC to see if it is a problem of your tv or the card...

 

[tiago.trindade]

Oh, could be you tv settings? Many tv can output stereo pcm and also 5.1 over toslink. You need to select the first. If not this, i would suggest to plug your tv directly to a toslink DAC to see if it is a problem of your tv or the card...

When I connect the TV toslink directly into my Topping E50 DAC, the sound is played perfectly. I already ordered another card from Amazon to check if it is an hardware issue with my item ‍

 

[tiago.trindade]

A new update. Last night I connected an old PS3 to the toslink input and I got sound on CamillaDSP (finally!). I then connected the TV toslink cable (instead of the PS3 one) and suddendly the TV sound was also there! Very strange behaviour...

So now I have sound from the TV being detected and processed by the sound card and by CamillaDSP, but have two issues:

1. How can I keep CamillaDSP always "running"? The "State:" is usually in STALLED/STOPPED. I need to play music in Moode to "wake it up" and then change the "TV profile" to have the TV sound playing on the speakers
2. I have about 0.1ms delay without convultion filters (causing a little bit of lip sync), and maybe 0.4ms delay with convultion filters (running Moode on a Raspberry pi 4 4GB). Any tip?

 

[MCH]

A new update. Last night I connected an old PS3 to the toslink input and I got sound on CamillaDSP (finally!). I then connected the TV toslink cable (instead of the PS3 one) and suddendly the TV sound was also there! Very strange behaviour...

Great! Enjoy!! I cannot explain that behavior either. Maybe a bad connected toslink? Well if it works now...

1. How can I keep CamillaDSP always "running"? The "State:" is usually in STALLED/STOPPED. I need to play music in Moode to "wake it up" and then change the "TV profile" to have the TV sound playing on the speakers

In the camilladsp GUI, there is a section "silence". There you can define what silence is, in db (silence_thershold) and the second setting (silence_timeout) is the time you want Camilladsp to stay in "running" state before it goes to pause status when there is no incoming signal. You can set up this time as you wish. I have also observed that if you set the silence_thereshold very low (like for instance -120 db) then camilladsp stays always running.
What i find strange is why yours go to stalled/stopped, instead of "pause", maybe there is a problem there?
Edit: i read again your post, i missundertood initially. I have no explanation for what you are experiencing, but I have never built this setup using moode, i always used just standalone camilladsp. If i need to guess, it might be something related to moode...

1. I have about 0.1ms delay without convultion filters (causing a little bit of lip sync), and maybe 0.4ms delay with convultion filters (running Moode on a Raspberry pi 4 4GB). Any tip?

You can affect the delay playing with chunksize (just above the silence settings) but be careful, if you go too low you can get dropouts. You can check and find the right sweet spot for you.
I experienced a bit longer than desired delays when running camilladsp on a raspberry pi zero 2w, but with a 4b 2gb the delay is almost none (i didn't measure it, but when I leave the sound of the tv speakers on, i don't notice barely any echo). I wonder if in your case it is something related to moodeaudio? Btw, are you running all this with moodeaudio? I didn't think it was easy/possible...

 

[forcedfx]

Thank you for this guide. Between this one and another guide, I've actually got CamillaDSP running on an Ubuntu VM, hosted by Windows and using one of the cheap CM6206 USB DACs. I've got audio coming in on the SPDIF and going out through the Front Stereo port. Haven't been able to confirm the SPDIF output working yet.

Has anyone been able to use this CM6206 DAC with CamillaDSP to send processed 2 channel audio to 4 different channels independently? I have two pairs of speakers and I want to process the audio differently for them. So one, set of speakers might receive audio above 80Hz and the other set receives the full audio source.

 

[MCH]

Thank you for this guide. Between this one and another guide, I've actually got CamillaDSP running on an Ubuntu VM, hosted by Windows and using one of the cheap CM6206 USB DACs. I've got audio coming in on the SPDIF and going out through the Front Stereo port. Haven't been able to confirm the SPDIF output working yet.

Has anyone been able to use this CM6206 DAC with CamillaDSP to send processed 2 channel audio to 4 different channels independently? I have two pairs of speakers and I want to process the audio differently for them. So one, set of speakers might receive audio above 80Hz and the other set receives the full audio source.

You are welcome.
If you are referring to the DAC in post 1, yes, i can confirm you can route up to 8 channels out using the analog outputs.
The way it works is peculiar: it outputs the L and R channels simultaneously through toslink and the analog L and R and the rest of the channels through analog only (obviously).
I tested only 2 mains + 2 subs, but you can use camilladsp to route the channels as you wish, that is, in your case, 2 channels full band and other two with that 80hz high pass filter. You can make it output both pairs simultaneously or even, using two different camilladsp configurations, select one pair or the other.
Hope it helps!

 

[forcedfx]

You are welcome.
If you are referring to the DAC in post 1, yes, i can confirm you can route up to 8 channels out using the analog outputs.
The way it works is peculiar: it outputs the L and R channels simultaneously through toslink and the analog L and R and the rest of the channels through analog only (obviously).
I tested only 2 mains + 2 subs, but you can use camilladsp to route the channels as you wish, that is, in your case, 2 channels full band and other two with that 80hz high pass filter. You can make it output both pairs simultaneously or even, using two different camilladsp configurations, select one pair or the other.
Hope it helps!

Glad to hear it's possible to do. I guess my question would be do I have to make changes to the device config on the device tab? Should I increase the number of output channels to 8? I tried setting the device to 8 output channels but CamillaDSP doesn't like that. Not sure where/how I would go about configuring that.

 

[MCH]

Glad to hear it's possible to do. I guess my question would be do I have to make changes to the device config on the device tab? Should I increase the number of output channels to 8? I tried setting the device to 8 output channels but CamillaDSP doesn't like that. Not sure where/how I would go about configuring that.

if now you have it working as 2 channels output, then yes, you need to make changes to the configuration to make it work as 8 channels output. If you are using the camilladsp GUI, you can try:
- set sample rate to either 44100 or 48000
- in playback device:
type: alsa
channels: 8
sampleformat S16LE
device: hw:ICUSBAUDIO7D

then, of course, you will have to change your mixers and pipeline to adapt it to a 8 channel output device. But in this regard, camilladsp will let you know if you did something wrong.

 

[JLGF1]

Between this one and another guide

Are you able to link to the #2 guide?

 

[forcedfx]

Are you able to link to the #2 guide?

Here you go https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/rpi4-camilladsp-tutorial.29656/

 

[forcedfx]

if now you have it working as 2 channels output, then yes, you need to make changes to the configuration to make it work as 8 channels output. If you are using the camilladsp GUI, you can try:
- set sample rate to either 44100 or 48000
- in playback device:
type: alsa
channels: 8
sampleformat S16LE
device: hw:ICUSBAUDIO7D

then, of course, you will have to change your mixers and pipeline to adapt it to a 8 channel output device. But in this regard, camilladsp will let you know if you did something wrong.

EDIT: Ok, I think I may have figured it out... No more errors. Just need to test it and see if it's actually doing what I expected.

Thanks that's what I thought I needed to do but Camilla is complaining that my config has errors in the "Config" section on the left side of the GUI and then complains when I add mixers for 8 destinations so there must be something I'm doing fundamentally wrong here.

 

[MCH]

Thanks that's what I thought I needed to do but Camilla is complaining that my config has errors in the "Config" section on the left side of the GUI and then complains when I add mixers for 8 destinations so there must be something I'm doing fundamentally wrong here.

Have you changed the number of channels of the playback device to 8 and still complains? Then you must have something wrong in your configuration. In these cases i find very helpful to have a look at the graphic schematic of the pipeline (small icon at the bottom of the pipeline configuration tab).
I would suggest you as well to try to output 8 channels to the DAC but from a different stereo source (in case). For instance, the squeezelite streamer, if you have it installed as per the camilladsp tutorial thread.

 

[forcedfx]

Have you changed the number of channels of the playback device to 8 and still complains? Then you must have something wrong in your configuration. In these cases i find very helpful to have a look at the graphic schematic of the pipeline (small icon at the bottom of the pipeline configuration tab).
I would suggest you as well to try to output 8 channels to the DAC but from a different stereo source (in case). For instance, the squeezelite streamer, if you have it installed as per the camilladsp tutorial thread.

Thanks for all your help. You replied before I could edit my post. I think I got it figured it out, just need to tweak it but I can see the 8 output channels outputting audio on the meter graphic so I'm cautiously optimistic.