Troubleshooting No Sound without HDMI (headless) -- Hint: check using 'aplay -l'

[rcrouthamel]

I was chasing the no sound issue on a RPi 3B. Initially, with the HDMI monitor connected, I configured /etc/default/raspotify with: OPTIONS="--device hw:0,1" (as in the instructions and another issue) and this appeared to work well. On reboot without HDMI, no audio.

What I realized is that these IDs change whether HDMI is connected at boot or not. The trick is to boot the pi in the configuration you plan to use it, then run the command aplay -l to figure out what card and device is assigned to the headphone jack. In my case it was actually 0,0:

     $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Headphones [bcm2835 Headphones], device 0: bcm2835 Headphones [bcm2835 Headphones]
  Subdevices: 7/8
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
  Subdevice #7: subdevice #7

So my configuration worked with OPTIONS="--device hw:0,0"

[bji219]

I am trying to use raspotify with a Focusrite 2i2. It is listing the device as a Subdevice. Have you seen anything like this before? I tried changing my OPTIONS="--device hw:1,0" (see screenshot below). I have also updated the alsa configuration in /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf to read defaults.ctl.card 0 and defaults.pcm.card 0. Please let me know what you think! Thanks.

Edit: The focusrite outputs audio from other source like YouTube when in this configuration. Also should be noted there is no HDMI cable or other USB devices attached. However, raspotify worked for the Focusrite in a different configuration with the HDMI plugged when booted.

[bji219]

Here is the output of the journal command: raspi_error.txt