Audio DAC interfaced through Raspberry Pi GPIO such as i2s and also two fan-cooled Raspberry Pi 4B 3d-printed cases with two different audio DAC hats.
Waveshare WM8960 Play/Record Audio Hat with a Wiki and a Github repository.
It is also used in the Minidexed Synth.
An ALSA capabilities script indicates this DAC to perform up to 32bit audio resolution at a 384kHZ sampling rate - see alsa-capabilties card 4.
To enable the WM8960 Waveshare hat with the Raspberry Pi 5 the following is required:
Refer to the solved issue here, and then use the script here to install. Also see the build here.
Currently (March 2023) the default update for the 32bit install of RPi OS boots the 64bit kernel after the update to 6.1.19 - change that to boot the 32bit kernel by adding arm_64bit=0 to /boot/config.txt, and check with uname -a -> Linux raspberrypi 6.1.19-v7l+ #1637 SMP Tue Mar 14 11:07:55 GMT 2023 armv7l GNU/Linux.
It is therefore advisable to use the 64bit Raspi OS - see Install-x64-WM8960 for the driver install results.
Install - Use the new March 2023 Waveshare Drivers:
git clone https://github.com/waveshare/WM8960-Audio-HAT
cd WM8960-Audio-HAT
sudo ./install.sh
sudo reboot
After the reboot aplay -l should show the wm8960 soundcard.
Currently (May 2022) there are two different ways to install the wm8960 soundcard on the new 5.15 kernel - both methods work well with pulseaudio and/or alsa. For a combination of the waveshare (Dr-Ni April version) and seeed drivers (HinTak version) refer to this posting. This combo method was tried and also yields a noise-free functional pulseaudio and alsa wm8960 sound device - refer to install-combo for the details of the installation.
It is advisable to power-cycle the Raspberry Pi after installation of the sound driver - a reboot may not be enough.
Install 1 - Use the new 1 May 2022 Waveshare Drivers:
git clone https://github.com/waveshare/WM8960-Audio-HAT
cd WM8960-Audio-HAT
sudo ./install.sh
sudo reboot
After the reboot aplay -l should show the wm8960 soundcard. If present, ignore the message "failed to load i2s-mmap" - it does load from config.txt and it is required.
Install 2 - Install using the Seeed Voicecard Drivers
To install first uninstall the waveshare WM8960 driver and reboot then delete the old WM8960-Audio-HAT folder. (It is better to remove power from the Raspberry Pi and HAT completely before installing these drivers.) For more details about this HAT look here or here. This driver also works without any adjustments to audio settings (i.e. works with both pulseaudio and alsa without distortion or noise).
git clone https://github.com/HinTak/seeed-voicecard
cd seeed-voicecard
sudo ./install.sh
sudo reboot
This seeed install also works on the 64bit kernel-5,15.xx. You may want to change kernel.img to kernel8.img in the install.sh but it is not necessary.
If you use headphones as the primary output, use pavucontrol (sudo apt install pavucontrol), run it then and select wm8960-headphones instead of the wm8960-speaker, and adjust the neadphone volume to above 0. This will make the headphone level sticky.
For the troubleshooting with an alsa-only settings, see the screenshot below First to Eleven's cover of Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day
If the wm8960 waveshare driver is already installed then uninstall it before updating the kernel to 5.10.11:
cd WM8960-Audio-HAT
sudo ./uninstall.sh
sudo reboot
Update to the new kernel, reboot and then delete the user folder WM8960-Audio-HAT if it exists. After the github clone as below, but before doing the install, download the modified wm8960.c from the Sybility WM8960-Audio-HAT github, and use as a replacement for the same file in the new WM8960-Audio-HAT folder. For more information about this file read about the wm8960 kernel 5.10 issues here and here. The modified wm8960.c has also been copied to this github.
git clone https://github.com/waveshare/WM8960-Audio-HAT
cd WM8960-Audio-HAT
sudo ./install.sh
sudo reboot
Run alsamixer, press F6, select wm8960 audio, and check that the headphone volume is not 0 (if you are using that instead of the speaker output).
64bit kernel 5.10.11 Starting with the Aug 2020 Raspi OS 64 bit, which was then updated to kernel 5.10.11.v8+ (sudo apt full-upgrade), it also yielded a fully working WM8960 HAT using the compile method as above. All the configuration files and overlays are in the 64bit folder.
Method A: Start with last released raspios install image 2020-05-27-raspios-buster-full-armhf.img, then update it fully: sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get upgrade -y, or whatever method you are used to. You will then end with a 5.45x kernel. Then do Step 1 and 2.
Method B: Start with last released raspios install image 2020-05-27-raspios-buster-full-armhf.img, then do Step 1 which will do a kernel upgrade as well. Use Step 2 to check if the WM8960 driver is installed, if not repeat Step 1 without a cleanup or uninstall - i.e start with sudo ./install.sh. Reboot and check again. I had to do this twice for one of the installs - refer to this issue.
Step 1:
git clone https://github.com/waveshare/WM8960-Audio-HAT
cd WM8960-Audio-HAT
sudo ./install.sh
sudo reboot
Step 2: After reboot check if audio device has been installed with aplay -l, which should list the wm8960 device as card 1 or 2. You can then follow the instructions at the Sparkfun WM8960 setup for alsa.
sudo alsamixer
sudo nano /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf
sudo alsamixer
The result is something like shown below - remember to select the wm8960 audio device and mixer in vlcplayer (or audacious) and either the headphone or speaker as the mixer element.
- The WM8960 CODEC is also used by the Seeed voicecard or ReSpeaker 2-Mics Pi HAT.
- The Makerfabs Raspi-Voice-Interaction-Hat also uses the WM8960 codec.
- The WM8960 CODEC is also used by the Adafruit Voice Bonnet Pi Hat.
Install instructions which will work for the Pi5 are also given there.
