ES9038 I2S driver, DoP

Use volumio for the last couple years and always happy with it, also excited about the improved features from different version, good work!

Recently bought set of I2S Dac based on ES9038Q2M mobile chip, great value for the bucks, sound quality is excellent, best of all DoP is supported and there is a light indicating the status

ebay.com/itm/ES9038-Q2M-DAC … SwTO9Z6Ws2

Tested and verified DoP is working under Amanero combo384 to PC as expected but DoP won’t work under Volumio RPI3 - DSD light will not on and no sound output with Dop enabled, did some research so far I believe it is a driver issue that 9038 will not recognize the signal send out from Volumio/RPI

Any comment is appriciated

ess9038 and every other ic from ess sabre , does not have open source drivers. No player based on rasbian can have those drivers (since it needs them open source)

How does it sound ?

Sounds OK but AUDIOPILES always want to make a difference on sound performance.

Article setup-audiophonics-es9018k2m-dac-with-volumio-t6041.html talked about it my Volumio IS crushed after I followed the wizard, lost web UI

After a couple days research, now it lead me believe it is a volumio problem for DoP, reasons are:

  1. Dac works fine with PC via Amanero 384
  2. by solely convert playing mode to DoP from DSD Direct under Volumio UI playback, DoP light from ES9038 DAC will not turn on and no sound heard
  1. by turning on Volume Normalization, DoP light will be on but there is a big noise, as well as FLAC file, see screenshot
  1. By turning DSD auto volume, doesn’t make any difference

Anybody is able to use DoP feature successfully?

My Dac setting is Generic DAC

24century does this dac es9038q2m works with volumio I2S PCM at least?

Yesterday I fired on Volumio (Rpi2) DAC ES9038Q2M
In the settings I chose the digi + pro hifiberry, audio resampling - target bi depth -32
all files are flickering (dts I’m not sure), but I still have a problem with spotify,
you can hear only the noise (in the rhythm of the song), in the right channel

PCM works just fine

Hi,
have you still issue with spotify? I can play music from flash disk, but not from Spotify. Same symptoms - noise in right channel. I found out this DAC have issue with 16bit format. If I enable resampling to 24bit, then I can play 16bit flac. It is possible enable resampling to Spotify plugins?

Hi yogilla/xlisec, try switching to DAC model “R-PI DAC” and reboot. Leave everything else untouched. No mixer, no resampling. DSD can either be “Direct” or “DoP”, both modes should work. Also ensure there’s only one i2s overlay in “/boot/config.txt”, i.e. “dtoverlay=rpi-dac”.
With this setup, ALSA (seems to) output i2s samples in “S32_LE” format exclusively. No issues with 16 bit FLAC, DSD, webradio, Spotify, whatsoever. Just give it a go, the board works fine here :wink:

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@LazyPete This fixed my problem! I had to register an account here to say a Big Thank to you! :smile: