Re-enable alsaequal in PiCorePlayer 5

After the upgrade of PiCorePlayer 4 to version 5 I noticed that there has been a change in the caps module. Unfortunately I was unable to configure the alsaequal equalizer using the webinterface.
PiZero devices with JustBoom Zero Amp hat are still working fine with equalizer and v5. But my Raspberry Pi 2/3/3b with a HifiBerry AMP2 and a china clone is not working. The cards are recognized as “sndrpihifiberry [snd_rpi_hifiberry_dacplus]“.

But good news: I found a manual workaround to re-enable the 10 band qualizer (that is badly missed in our weekly ectronic club). Scroll down for the solution.

After installation of alsaequal caps.tcz is loaded which differs in version from caps-4.5.0.tcz in PiCorePlayer 4.

After reboot the alsaequal dialog is unable to find the module loaded. In fact equal is not available as playback device.

To solve this, please do the following:
Ensure to disable alsaequal using “Tweaks” -> “ALSA 10 band Equalizer”
Reboot the device.

If you are upgrading from v4, please ensure to have old version of “alsaequal” and “caps” removed.

Next step is: login to SSH using user “tc” and the password which can be defined under “Tweaks” -> Password for “tc”.

Execute following statement:

tc@pcp-ez:~$ tce-load -wi alsaequal
alsaequal.tcz.dep OK
caps.tcz.dep OK
Downloading: caps.tcz
Connecting to repo.picoreplayer.org (104.27.187.254:443)
caps.tcz             100% |*********************************************************************|  252k  0:00:00 ETAcaps.tcz: OK
Downloading: alsaequal.tcz
Connecting to repo.picoreplayer.org (104.27.187.254:443)
alsaequal.tcz        100% |*********************************************************************| 24576  0:00:00 ETAalsaequal.tcz: OK

Fill file “/etc/asound.conf” with following configuration:

# /etc/asound.conf
pcm.!default {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
}

# equalizer
ctl.equal {
  type equal;
  module "Eq10";
}

pcm.plugequal {
  type equal;
  slave.pcm "plughw:0,0";
  module "Eq10";
}

pcm.equal {
  type plug;
  slave.pcm plugequal;
}

In webinterface go to “Tweaks” > ALSA 10 band Equalizer (click yes) and “Save” below.
Store configuration using command “pcp br”. Device will reboot.

Squeezelite should be running using the equalizer which is configurable using the webinterface. Thank me later 🙂
I am going to write a Thread for the pcp forum over the next days.

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