ALSA Configuration

Peppy player leverages several ALSA plugins which are required for such functionalities as:

• Equalizer - the configuration was described in the previous chapter.
• VU Meter screensaver - this functionality requires peppyalsa plugin
• Spectrum Analyzer screensaver - this screensaver also requires peppyalsa plugin

The details about peppyalsa plugin installation and configuration can be found on the corresponding wiki pages. If you use one of the disk images then you can skip this chapter as all plugins have been installed and configured for all disk images.

Each plugin should be declared as ALSA device either in the system file /etc/asound.conf for all users or in user-specific file for example /home/pi/.asoundrc for pi user. This chapter will describe user-specific file .asoundrc. The ALSA device defined in that file should be also specified in the configuration file /home/pi/Peppy/players.txt. For example equal device defined in .asoundrc should be defined the following way for VLC player on Linux:

[vlc.linux] 
server.command = --aout=alsa --alsa-audio-device=equal --verbose=-1

The equalizer plugin changes the audio signal. If you prefer unchanged signal then you can just define sound card as player output:

[vlc.linux] 
server.command = --aout=alsa --alsa-audio-device=hw --verbose=-1

The following files provide the examples of the configuration for different ALSA plugins, just remember to rename the file to .asoundrc. The files are available on all disk images. The file .asoundrc on disk images has the content of the .asoundrc-equal-peppyalsa file.

• .asoundrc-equal - configuration file for equalizer plugin. The equal device should be defined as output device in the players.txt file.
• .asoundrc-peppyalsa - configuration file for peppyalsa plugin. The default device should be defined as output device in the players.txt file.
• .asoundrc-equal-peppyalsa - configuration file for two plugins: equalizer and peppyalsa. The default device should be defined as output device in the players.txt file. In this file the output from the equalizer plugin configured as the input for the peppyalsa plugin. The output from the peppyalsa plugin goes to the sound card.
• .asoundrc-multi - this file also has the configuration for two plugins: equalizer and peppyalsa and default device should be also defined as output device in the players.txt file. In this file the input siganl was splitted into two signals where one serves as the input to the equalizer plugin and the other goes to the peppyalsa plugin. The output from the equalizer plugin goes to the sound card. The output from the peppyalsa plugin was redirected to the null device (/dev/null).

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