piCorePlayer Releases

piCorePlayer 1.07 is ready.

Changes

• Updated kernel to rpi-linux-3.11.5
• Better picoreplayer script, so now it is much easier to change the Squeezelite settings, like name etc - and you can see what the current settings are.
• More Wifi adapters are supported (I think that most the Ralink adapters are working now).
• Better Wifi script (thanks to Randy McEuen who made it possible to save non-protected Wifi’s as well).
• The new version is larger than usual, as this has been requested by many who wanted to add extra packages to the piCorePlayer. If needed I can provide a smaller version.

BIG thanks to Randy McEuen who helped by beta testing the new version and also provided a valuable patch to the Wifi.sh script in the microcore community.

piCorePlayer 1.06 is now ready.

I have disabled the automatic resampling in ALSA (the Dmix option), so now it play 44.1kHz and 48kHz audio with the correct sample rate.

The pCP Team
Paul, Greg, Ralphy and Steen

piCorePlayer 1.05 is now ready.

It plays all sample rates from 44.1 to 192kHz via HDMI. Please use this string if you use HDMI: -a ::32:0

I have included rt2800.bin, so hopefully more Wifi devices are supported.

I have updated ALSA to version 1.0.27.2.

The pCP Team
Paul, Greg, Ralphy and Steen

piCorePlayer 1.03 is now able to handle both low resolution (44.1/16) as well as high resolution (192/16) via HDMI (I hope).

The pCP Team
Paul, Greg, Ralphy and Steen

IMPORTANT

Both piCorePlayer 1.01 and 1.02 have problems with 44/16 and 48/16 files via HDMI, whereas 88/24, 96/24 and 192/24 are playing fine. I’m looking into this issue, so if that is important for you, please wait for a new version.

New menu which makes it easy to use audio out via HDMI. I have tested it and it is working fine with 192/24 flac.

The pCP Team
Paul, Greg, Ralphy and Steen

piCorePlayer is updated to version 1.01.

Changes

• I have increased some of the buffer settings in the HDMI part, so hopefully you can use 192kHZ through HDMI (piCorePlayer could use 96kHZ whereas higher sample rates resulted in crackles and noise). Please test because I have no equipment to test it with.
• Kernel updated to 3.9.10+ which include more USB fixes.
• I added some extra files which might be important for the function of various WiFi adapters.

You can get it from the downloads page.

piCorePlayer 1.0 is ready and you can get it from the download page.

High resolution audio through HDMI

• Thanks to the suggestion from giantpopples from the Squeezbox forum and the work by tghewett from the Raspberry Pi forum it is now possible to stream high resolution audio through the HDMI cable. Before the Raspberry Pi would down-sample everything to 48kHZ. But we modified the bcm2835-pcm.c and build the kernel. Now it is possible to stream 88.1kHZ and 96kHZ through HDMI. It might be possible even to use up to 192kHZ, but I have not received any report on this.

Original

.formats = SNDRV_PCM_FMTBIT_U8 | SNDRV_PCM_FMTBIT_S16_LE,
.rates = SNDRV_PCM_RATE_CONTINUOUS | SNDRV_PCM_RATE_8000_48000,
.rate_min = 8000,
.rate_max = 48000,
.channels_min = 1,
.channels_max = 2,

Changed to

.formats = SNDRV_PCM_FMTBIT_U8 | SNDRV_PCM_FMTBIT_S16_LE | SNDRV_PCM_FMTBIT_S32_LE,
.rates = SNDRV_PCM_RATE_CONTINUOUS | SNDRV_PCM_RATE_8000_192000,
.rate_min = 8000,
.rate_max = 192000,
.channels_min = 1,
.channels_max = 2,

Kernel

• Kernel updated to 3.8.13+ which is the special fiq_split version gsh is working on where the USB problems in the RPi is in focus.

Reduced size

• Once again back in small size 28 MB in all.

Mild overclocking

arm_freq=800
core_freq=333
sdram_freq=450
force_turbo=1

Other tweaks in the config.txt, cmdline.txt and /etc/modprobe.conf file.

A new test version is ready. It is build on kernel 3.8.13+ and using the special fiq_split branch. In addition I have tweaked the kernel, so that it might be possible t o use 192kHz as max sample rate via HDMI. Before the max rate was 48kHz. I can’t test this so please report back.

Get it from here: TestVersion 1.0 of the piCorePlayer (not available any more)

The pCP Team
Paul, Greg, Ralphy and Steen

Important info about the piCorePlayer version 09

• Kernel is updated to 3.8.12+ the fiq-split version made by gsh in order to improve USB handling. It is an experimental branch which hopefully in time will fix the USB problems observed with our Raspberry’s
• ALSA and Wifi modules in microcore has been updated with modules from the raspberry kernel
• The WiFi problem seems to improved: I can now connect at 150Mbit/sec using any kind of WPA/WPA2 protection without any problems
• The sound via USB DAC seems also improved - now it is possible to use a USB DAC without the need for changing the default ALSA buffer settings.

Download version 09 of the piCorePlayer