ES9018 DAC

[alidaf]

I've just replaced a PCM5102 DAC with an ES9018 but I get nothing but bad hiss in the left speaker. Has anyone had any success with the ES9018?

[sle118]

Could you How did you configure it? Do you have the data sheets? The DAC might need a MCLK to work properly (which is supported, of course).

[alidaf]

The ES9018 is on another level for DACs and there's plenty of documentation for the chip itself, but the problem is when certain 3rd parties release a board that is almost certainly an attempt at a knock-off of the Audiophonics boards for the RPi, which are woefully expensive. There is scant information other than a few screen shots of a configuration menu with the HifiBerry DAC selected. The are a couple of badly translated FAQs, one of which covers the MCLK, which isn't needed. I took a punt but fell short on this one.

[ElFishi]

I have a ES9018K2M running with squeezelite-esp32, even w/o MCLK.
The default input configuration of the ES9018K2M is I2S 32-bit, and it works with the 32bit FW.
To run it 16-bit you need to set the input register.
dac_controlset {"init":[ {"reg":1,"val":12} ],"poweron":[ {"reg":1,"val":12} ]}

[alidaf]

Hi again @ElFishi. I got so far with this after hijacking your other post because it's the only one that mentions the ES9018 with the ESP32 anywhere on the entire internet as far as I can tell. Obviously this is due to your singular and insane level of wizardry.
The problem is that this board doesn't have any user I2C access so the settings are hard-coded and obfuscated. The site claims that this works with the Moode and Volumio RPi distros and the HifiBerry DAC overlay, but that board is a PCM5102 so I don't get how they can make that claim. It should be a straightforward swap but the only progress I made was to use the 32-bit version of Squeezelite-ESP32. By progress, I mean I no longer get a repulsive hiss, just silence.

[ElFishi]

I just put that down if any other poor soul finds this in google.
My ES9018K2M plays proper music with the 32bit I2S firmware of squeezelite-esp32 and an empty dac_controlset, i.e. no command via I2C.
Are you sure your wiring is OK?
I do not use MCLK, but Sébastien says you can.
Do you have any schematic for your board?

[alidaf]

I thought as much but figured it would still be handy to at least indicate how far this has got here. I do still wonder whether the board is faulty or I've been sent the wrong version but there are obvious translation issues in dealing with the company.

[ElFishi]

I just looked at the photos of you board on Aliexpress. It looks like the I2C pins (3 SCL, 4 SDA) are connected to the PCB and lead to 10k resistors pulling them high. So with a steady hand you could solder two wires to access the I2C port.
This will not solve your problem, though, just sayin'.

[alidaf]

It might not solve the problem, but what a hoot! I'm very tempted. I'm about to try removing a potentiometer on a valve amp board to replace it with a pair of digital pots so I can have IR and rotary encoder control. If I don't go up in smoke with that then I may give it a go because, damn it, I want to be a wizard too, even if I'm the oldest in the class!

[sle118]

That's the spirit!

[alidaf]

Update. I'm not going to go into what happened with the tube amp (until I've recovered), but as far as the ES9018K2M board is concerned, and after an awful lot of to-ing and fro-ing, with some mild rage (a little more than mild according to family members) and associated greying, I finally got it to work with Moode using the Audiophonics-ES9018 driver. The seller's latest excuse is that RaspiOS is to blame because the ES9018 driver no longer exists in Volumio. They seem oblivious to the fact that they advise using a driver for the PCM5102. But anyways!
The question remains as to whether this board could still work with the Squeezelite-ESP32. The RPi drivers are here.
There is no I2C access. The RPi connections are pure I2S, as they would be for the ESP32 so I don't know how the device gets configured. I think it's magic. There's a lot of it about lately.

[ElFishi]

If you can't send commands via I2C, feed it with 32 bits I2S. It should work.

[alidaf]

I don't know how to change the I2S bit length. I've looked all over, which probably means it's in bold headline and I just can't see it.

[ElFishi]

its in the choice of firmware

[alidaf]

Ah, ok. Yes I'm already using 32 bit. I think the audio bit-depth is still only a maximum of 24 bits though. I don't know how the RPi does it but it must do some sort of resampling on the fly because I think the ES9018 is fixed to 32 bits.

[ElFishi]

Its only the interface configuration for the I2S input. It could be as simple as zero padded. But the default configuration of the ES9018K2M is that you toggle the serial clock 32 times and send 32 bits for one channel, then toggle the LR-clock, send another 32 bit, toggle LR again and so on.
The 32-bit fw does that no matter what bit depth your audio source has.

[alidaf]

That is actually more information than I've managed to find in the last 3 weeks. That makes it sound trivial to implement but it would probably have to be done as a preset and hard-coded.

[dierochade]

I have very similar problems with this dac: AUDIOPHONICS DAC Sabre ES9018K2M I2S / SPDIF to RCA 32bit 384kHz DSD256

I run the normal 32bit firmware .
Me too, I do only get some noise, farly resembling the music on one channel. So for me this does not work out of the box?

When aked for the wiring, I did just test it for continuity, which is ok. Soldering looks good for me too.
Is it correct that I cannot connect to i2c on this board, because there are no pins

Is there anything that can be done to make this work?
Would it have any use to ask the seller for documentation (Its a french company, so they might give support. What would be useful resources, schematics, data sheet and ??

Any help or recommendation (change dac? Use spdif?) would be highly appreciated

[alidaf]

That's correct, no need for I2C. It is pre-configured.

That board is the similar to mine but has the extra 74HC04D inverter chip of the "coax" version as it's sold on the website I bought mine, although it still has the third capacitor that is normally removed for something else. I imagine it would work the same way and the connections should be the same apart from the inputs.

I don't know specifically what made mine work in the end but to be safe I re-soldered the connections on both the DAC board and the ESP32. I also made sure to take the 5V and ground directly from the ESP32. I tend to split the power supply before the ESP32 (but link grounds), to power peripherals rather than risk overloading the ESP32. This isn't usually a problem but could have made a difference here. I really don't know for sure.

In any case, I was thankfully prompted to try one more time by a resident wizard guru, re-connected everything as simply as I could and it worked straight away.

The only config for mine is in the NVS editor: model=I2S,bck=25,ws=33,do=32

[alidaf]

Obviously, the NVS parameter for SPDIF is different, i.e. spdif_config, which for the same GPIOs will just be bck=25,ws=33,do=32