BalenaSound Spotify Connect Volume Control ALSA mixer

Hello,

I’m enjoying Balena Sound and I’m toying around with a USB Audio Card. The USB Audio Device is UAC1 compliant and listens to the “PC Volume” on my Windows machine. It should also be ALSA compliant. I want to be sure that the volume is being controlled via the soundcard’s hardware volume control, rather than a software volume control which will provide diminished sound quality.

I logged into the Terminal to take a peek at the volume config. (Terminal>Target: Audio>command:alsamixer). I see the volume slider there and I can turn the volume up and down as necessary in the terminal.

I then turned on spotify connect and connected my phone to the Pi. When changing the volume on my phone, and thus controlling the spotify connect volume, I’m noticing that the alsamixer is not being updated. This leads me to believe that spotify connect in the Balena Sound image is controlling volume in software.

How can I configure it to change the alsa volume mixer instead? This should result in changing the hardware volume control of the USB soundcard which will result in higher quality sound.

Thanks for your help!
Jay

Hello Jay,
have you configured your USB Audio card in /etc/asound.conf?
take a look at this GH Issue where another user successfully achieved it.

Let us know if you need any assistance with it

Hello Juan,

Thank you.

I think the confusion from that thread is that there is no “Bluetooth-Audio” terminal in my copy of BalenaSound. I assume I must configure in the “Audio” terminal, correct?

Create the file in a bluetooth-audio terminal with sudo nano /etc/asound.conf or whatever text editor you like, and add the block below. Restart and the chosen card will be selected in alsamixer.

pcm.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw           
    card 1
}

It looks like there is Host OS, airplay, audio, bluetooth, multiroom-client, multiroom-server, sound-supervisor, and spotify. And it looks like I can create a file in each if I want… Which one is the correct one and what’s the difference?

Jay

I have this file configured in my “Audio” terminal, and it’s playing sound through the USB>DAC. However, alsamixer shows one volume control. Spotify connect has what seems to be yet another volume control on my phone.

Either they don’t sync at all (which I don’t think is the case) or they are not the same. The spotify connect client is changing the volume in software, the alsamixer seems to actually correctly control the DAC.

I’m attempting to discover if there is a way to have spotify connect control the alsamixer directly, so that it controls the volume on the DAC.

Jay

hey Jay,
Quick question first of all, have you followed the steps in this link?