Quote:
Originally Posted by dhdurgee
I assume that the problem is that the sox binaries and libraries provided with the package would need to be replaced with HF versions for this to work for you. Thus a separate HF package is needed.
I put together the original package by downloading sox and all its dependencies from a Raspberry Pi repository with the same architecture and kernel release as the current Kindle. Assuming that you have installed USBNetlite and can ssh into your Kindle please let me know the results of the
"uname -a" command. Alternatively you can run this in kterm or any other access you may have to a Linux terminal window on your Kindle. It might also be useful to see what messages you get in a terminal window by entering the command line used in the KUAL configuration for sox. It might show if the problem is the sox binary or one of its dependencies.
It will take some time to put together and as I don't have a Kindle with HF firmware I would not be able to test it myself. It might make sense for me to start a separate topic when i gets to that point so that those with the HF firmware can do so and report their problems.
Dave
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Hi Dave,
Thanks for following up. Here’s everything I’ve found while digging into audio playback on my Kindle Paperwhite 4 (10th Gen) running HF firmware version 5.16.2.1.1.
Starting with the items you asked about
:
The Sox extension is installed at /mnt/us/extensions/sox/, but both sox and soxi binaries are missing or broken. Running playall.sh results in:
/mnt/us/extensions/sox/playall.sh: line 52: /mnt/us/extensions/sox/soxi: not found
/mnt/us/extensions/sox/playall.sh: line 68: /mnt/us/extensions/sox/sox: not found
GStreamer 0.10 binaries are present (gst-launch-0.10, gst-inspect-0.10, etc.), but only a few plugins load. Key components like decodebin or mad are not present. For example:
gst-launch-0.10 filesrc location=/mnt/us/music/hymn_for_red.mp3 ! decodebin ! audioconvert ! mixersink
→ ERROR: no element "decodebin"
As for the audio stack:
aplay -l returns “no soundcards found...”
/dev/snd/ only contains the timer node
No ALSA sound card is exposed
audiomgrd is running and likely handling audio internally
Some other findings:
Kernel version is Linux kindle 4.1.15-lab126 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Nov 28 11:38:31 UTC 2024 armv7l.
SSH access via USBNetLite is fully functional.
Python is not installed (neither python nor python3 is available).
Attempts to use Sox’s fallback to GStreamer fail due to missing plugins and bad caps formatting.
The available GStreamer plugins include only basic elements like filesrc, filesink, fdsink, fakesink, mixersink, and audiblesrc. Nothing for MP3 decoding.
I’ve used an MP3 file in /mnt/us/music/ for testing throughout.
Where I think we are:
Audible playback over Bluetooth works, which confirms the audio system is functional, but only for Amazon's stack. GStreamer’s output pipeline works (via mixersink), but the decoding side is incomplete. Sox v1 won’t work as-is without the missing binaries, and even if it did, decoding might still fail. A custom static Sox build with basic WAV support could be workable, assuming it can write to the available audio sink. MP3 support would need libmad or pre-converted files.
I’m ready to test any builds or scripts you put together. Let me know how I can help further. Thanks again for all the work you’ve done on this.
—Hubris
(I was running out of time so I had ChatGPT write this up for me. All the info should be correct, but let me know)