A bit louder- please! (HifiBerry DAC Plus)

I bought and attached a HifiBerry DAC Plus for my RPi running Volumio.

The reason was less the quality (the default AudioJack output of the RPi 3B+ is actually not that bad IMHO), but that the output volume was so low. Whenever I switched to the Pi from other sources on my Stereo (CD, Radio, Mobile) I always had to walk over and turn up the volume. Inversely, when I switched from the Pi to any other source this frequently blew off my ears before I managed to turn the volume down.

With the HifiBerry DAC Plus I know I could have (substantially) more volume, but what I get out-of-the-box with Volumio is practically the same low level a I got with the RPi’s AudioJack. How/where can I adjust the “overall” volume of the DAC Plus? I would like to be on par with the other sources when Volumio’s volume dial is at, say, ~75%.

Read somewhere that you can add this
dtoverlay=hifiberry-dacplus,24db_digital_gain
In
/boot/config.txt

Tried it but the result in high volume ain’t good ! :wink:

Yep - that plays indeed considerable louder. :sunglasses:

Now the RPi is roughly on par with my CD-player when I turn Volumio’s volume up to 50%. And it starts audibly distorting strong bass-beats from ~70% volume on upwards. At 100% it really sounds awfull - as you already wrote! :slight_smile:

So, I could live with that now, but even better would of course be something in-between.
Is there something like “12db_digital_gain” or so?

Since I am so far completely ignorant on how this works: What is this “,24db_digital_gain” suffix doing? Is this an argument for the driver or is this another driver daisy-chained with the first one or how does this work?

You could try the parametric equalizer plugin from @balbuze which has a master gain slider as part of the EQ settings. I don’t think it is intended to boost volume but I tried it and it definitely works. It has increments of 1 from 0 to 24 so you can fine tune the gain to find a balance between volume and distortion.

Plugin is here
volumio2-parametric-equalizer-plugin-t8222.html

@Rees:
Now - THAT was a really excellent hint and a snap to install and get going!
Happy camper now with 12db gain as desired. :sunglasses:

And as a side effect I can now tame our livingrooms resonance frequency of ~80Hz! Brilliant!

Thanks so much! I owe you! :smiley:

SonosKiller, thanks so much for this tip. I was just about ready to throw my HifiBerry DAC+ in the trash, but after adding this argument (to /boot/firmware/usercfg.txt not /boot/config.txt as I’m using Ubuntu), I can hear the music and the sound is amazing! Not sure why this is not the default and 24db_digital_loss is not the option - ha ha). -Mike Mac