I bought a Pisound card in June 2020 and only had the time to try to use it now.
- I plugged the card to a RP 4 B 4GB I just received (pins are well connected),
- put both in a Pisound Case,
- flashed a micro sd with the last version of Patchbox OS
- plugged the whole to a power supply with amperages >=2.5
- ran wizard setup
- installed last updates
- reran wizard setup
When I do $ speaker-test -c2 -r48000 -Dhw:pisound
I have:
speaker-test 1.1.8
Playback device is hw:pisound
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Playback open error: -16,Device or resource busy
Hey, this error means that the card is already in exclusive control by some application, most likely the Jack backend itself.
Please retry this command after first stopping the Jack server:
sudo systemctl stop jack
Restart it again using start instead of stop.
Hi Giedrius, it doesn’t change anything:
patch@patchbox:~ $ sudo systemctl stop jack
patch@patchbox:~ $ sudo systemctl start jack
patch@patchbox:~ $ speaker-test -c2 -r48000 -Dhw:pisound
speaker-test 1.1.8
Playback device is hw:pisound
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Playback open error: -16,Device or resource busy
Run speaker-test while the Jack server is stopped. Sorry, I just meant to write how to get it started again, after testing the audio. 
patch@patchbox:~/Scripts $ sudo systemctl stop jack
patch@patchbox:~/Scripts $ speaker-test -c2 -r48000 -Dhw:pisound
speaker-test 1.1.8
Playback device is hw:pisound
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 128 to 131072
Period size range from 64 to 65536
Using max buffer size 131072
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 32768
was set buffer_size = 131072
0 - Front Left
1 - Front Right
Then for example, if I run modep I have no sound, and
speaker-test -c2 -r48000 -Dhw:pisound
says
Playback open error: -16,Device or resource busy
again.
Did speaker-test produce audio?
How are you testing audio in MODEP?
It produced noise before I ran MODEP. I’m using patchbox os GUI mode. I ran MODEP with
$ patchbox
I used chrome as a client: http://patchbox.local/
I have an electric guitar on Pisound jack in and a headphone on Pisound jack out.
Though when I’m able to ear the noise from speaker-test, I’m not able to ear an mp3 from Audacity nor an audio stream from chromium.
Yes it’s expected, the speaker-test is using ALSA backend which normally always works exclusively with the audio card, without sharing it with other software. That’s why we have Jack backend on Patchbox OS there by default, as it can handle multiple programs properly.
So as you have confirmed that output is working, maybe it’s an input issue? Could you try recording something into Audacity? Make sure speaker-test is off, and that the Jack backend is running, then try recording using Audacity. It should be preconfigured already to use Jack as its audio provider, but if necessary, you may reconfigure in the preferences. You should at least see in the waveform it displays of the recording that your produced audio is being picked up.
Also, do you see the clip LED light up on Pisound when playing your guitar loudly (or with the input gain turned up a bit)? The LED is located at bottom left corner of the board.
(during normal operation, you should try not to ever get the clip LED to light up, so set input gain on Pisound to as low as possible, and adjust the output volume of connect device to ~90% or so, or lower if necessary)
Pisound Jack in seems to work. I plugged a microphone and recorded my voice with audacity, exported to mp3, and sent it by email to be able to play it on another computer. I heard what I recorded.
The problem is from the Pisound jack out since I’m not able to ear Audacity playback with it.
patch@patchbox:~ $ amidi -l
Dir Device Name
IO hw:2,0 pisound MIDI PS-3ZCSZQ6
patch@patchbox:~ $ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 2: pisound [pisound], device 0: PS-3ZCSZQ6 snd-soc-dummy-dai-0 [PS-3ZCSZQ6 snd-soc-dummy-dai-0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
patch@patchbox:~ $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: b1 [bcm2835 HDMI 1], device 0: bcm2835 HDMI 1 [bcm2835 HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 4/4
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
card 1: Headphones [bcm2835 Headphones], device 0: bcm2835 Headphones [bcm2835 Headphones]
Subdevices: 4/4
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
card 2: pisound [pisound], device 0: PS-3ZCSZQ6 snd-soc-dummy-dai-0 [PS-3ZCSZQ6 snd-soc-dummy-dai-0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
As speaker-test was producing the white noise, it is working ok.
What settings did you use for Jack when configuring it? (You can reconfigure by running patchbox) The recommended settings are available here: https://blokas.io/patchbox-os/docs/setup-wizard/
Could you try running MODEP again, and just connect the left input ports to the right output ports, without any effects in between? It should then make input audio simply pass through unmodified to the output. You should hear your microphone transmit signal to the speakers or headphones.
I ran the setup wizard various times with the recommended settings. The issue is not only with MODEP (and I don’t hear anything even without any effect) but with audio output from every app.
Hearing noise from
patch@patchbox:~ $ sudo systemctl stop jack
patch@patchbox:~ $ speaker-test -c2 -r48000 -Dhw:pisound
might indicate that the hardware works, but still, Pisound remains non-functional if I can’t output any audio from it.
Working input and output means that there’s only some software configuration issue left to resolve.
Try placing a ‘C* CEO - Chief Executive Oscillator’ from Generators section in the pedalboard and hook it up to the outputs - it produces sounds on its own.
After doing this, please attach the Jack and MODEP and kernel logs so we can see whether there’s any errors reported there:
sudo journactl -u jack > jack.log
sudo journactl -u modep-mod-ui > modep-mod-ui.log
sudo journactl -u modep-mod-host > modep-mod-host.log
dmesg > dmesg.log
The above commands will produce the 4 log files. If they’re large, you may just zip them, text files compress really well.
