pHAT DAC no sound issues

Hi everybody!

I’m having issues playing back audio on a pi zero, using my recently bought pHAT DAC!
I followed the installation setup, both the automatic one https://get.pimoroni.com/phatdac | bash and the manual one too check if everything was fine.

I’m running Jessie.

If I go to the Audio Devices panel, I get this error:

“No ALSA audio devices were detected. Enable the internal audio device, or connect a USB or HAT audio device.”

The audio icon is greyed out, and I cannot change the volume.

I’m trying to play back audio using this speaker .

I tried playing an example mp3 file using omxplayer as suggested in the official guide on the raspberry pi page but I had no luck.

If I run alsamixer I get this result : https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/phatdac-install-issues/5671/7

How should I test if the pHAT DAC is working properly?

I’m using a 11mm stacking header on the pHAT DAC, I also checked each pin with the multimeter and the soldering is fine.

IMG_1590

PS: I’ve got a project due next Friday in which I’d really loved to use the pHAT DAC… :( )

As a side note, from what I understood the pHAT DAC output signal needs to be amplified… would something like that work: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/adafruit-stereo-3-7w-class-d-audio-amplifier ?

Yes that will work. I have one plugged into the analog audio jack of a Pi 3B.

You can plug a set of ear bud MP3 player headphones in for testing though.

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I’m fairly certain you’ve soldered your pHAT DAC upside-down if you intend to plug the female header onto the Pi?

Don’t know how I missed that, but yes if your Pi has a male header you have your stacking header soldered in the wrong way round. You have bottom side up instead of down.

Yep. The header’s on the wrong side… however… if you solder a male header on the underside of a Pi Zero, then it should work just fine!! Unconventional, but…

Thank you all. My pi zero has a female header, here are some pics:

So it is fine, isn’t it?

Yes it’s fine, it will (should ;) ) work that way. Normally it would be a male connector on the Pi, but that’s not etched in stone.

Today or tomorrow I will receive the adafruit amplifier and I will proceed to connect the pHAT to it and then to the speakers, which audio test should I perform in order to understand if the board is working as it should?
Thanks!

Well, that’s a very neat way of doing it!!!

I’ve put a female on the bottom side before. Makes it easy to plug a Pi Zero into the pHat Stack etc, just like it was a pHat. Using a stacking header would give you the best of both worlds so to speak. You give up a little headroom though if you only use one side. I would but the female side down and male pins on top of the Pi Zero. Nothing says you have to, its just how I would do it. ;)

Thank you guys.
Can I just ask you how should I test if the audio is working fine (I read somewhere on the forum that omxplayer is not suitable for this) ?
I’m using the festival tts library for my project, could I just test it with festival?

On my Pirate Radio pHat Beat I did as follows from the terminal window.
sudo systemctl stop pulseaudio
speaker-test -c2 -t wav
I’m not if it applies to the pHat DAC though?

OP, were you ever able to resolve your issues. Seeing similar behavior.

@V00D00 I’m sorry but in the end I moved to another board (UDOOx86) which worked well. I’ll try again in the future and update the post in case it works!

@vvzen, Thanks for the response. I actually ended up reordering the phat DAC and this one worked fine. Not sure why the first one was faulty.