If HiFiBerry was soldered correctly, it should work out-of-the-box with the usual Raspberry Linux distributions.

Check drivers

To check, if the sound card was recognized by the kernel, use aplay:

[email protected] ~ $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 0: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA]
Subdevices: 8/8
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
card 1: CODEC [USB AUDIO CODEC], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: sndrpitda1541a [snd_rpi_tda1541a], device 0: TDA1541A HiFi tda1541a-hifi-0 []
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

In this output you can see 3 sound cards:
– card 0 is the onboard sound output
– card 1 “USB AUDIO CODEC” is HiFiBerry
– card 2 would usually not exist, it is the I2S sound interface that is not integrated in the normal Raspberry Pi Linux kernel.

Setting the volume

The playback volume might not be set to full volume. To set it to 100%, use amixer:

[email protected] ~ $ amixer -c 1 set PCM playback 64
Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined penum
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 64
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]