- 2025 * March Update DietPi 9.11.2
Wrote the most recent DietPi_OdroidC4-ARMv8-Bookworm.img.xz to my drive using BalenaEtcher and was detected and booted from Petitboot. It timed out and dropped to shell but ‘exit’ let it continue and install. It did all the usual install tasks and I added mate desktop.
It boots and runs fine. NO sound even though it appears to detect it. I did install alsa during setup. I also dont see any panfrost named packages installed but there are msgs from it in dmesg so its installed 
I tried Armbian the other day and it did get the sound right. I just wish they would switch their build to use the same image setup that DietPi now uses because once I wrote their image to my drive it was unreadable and would not boot. Same image to SD worked but it is SO SLOW compared to usb3/ssd!
Thank you @MichaIng for your Hardkernel/amlogic support!
Trying to figure out if the reason sound isnt working is due to missing packages I found a script https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26592963/how-to-compare-installed-linux-packages-between-two-machines
So I made a copy of the packages installed on dietpi 9.11.2 and on the latest armbian. Ran the perl script and got this report.
pkg_compare_raw.txt (27.7 KB)
I will look through it for alsa/pipewire sound packages and see if installing any of those helps and update this thread if I have any luck
Did you select the respective onboard sound option via dietpi-config? The ALSA mixer needs to be configured in a somewhat complicated way, which is done by our script.
Using another sound engine of course also works. But our intention is to have it functional with plain ALSA.
Yes, in dietpi-config its set to odroidc4_hdmi1.
I just performed the upgrade from 11.2>12.1 and went through config again which reset all the sound card settings. Opened sound settings and there is no test speakers option. I ran speaker-test -c2 and it tries but still no sound. I didnt see anything in dmesg etiher. With speaker-test running justboom shows for alsa output info:
access: rw_interleaved
format: s16_le
subformat: std
channels: 2
rate: 48000 (48000/1)
period_size: 65536
buffer_size: 262144
Not sure if its related but in monitor preferences it shows as unknown. So I am unclear how alsa output gets routed to hdmi device.
I’ll test on Odroid N2, which works almost the same. Maybe something changed in recent kernel.
I tried it on my Odroid N2+, which uses the exact same HDMI audio set, and it works fine:
root@OdroidN2:~# speaker-test -c2
speaker-test 1.2.8
Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 4 to 262144
Period size range from 2 to 131072
Using max buffer size 262144
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 65536
was set buffer_size = 262144
0 - Front Left
1 - Front Right
Time per period = 5.472946
0 - Front Left
1 - Front Right
Time per period = 5.478437
However, there is one different: On Odroid N2 we additionally set the volume via:
amixer -c 0 set 'ACODEC' '85%'
Not sure why this is not the case on C4. Can you try this, in case also check whether there is a working volume handle in alsamixer?
I upgraded to 9.13.2 and no improvement. I did also switch to a 4k tv and that solved my sound issues on debian 12 but didnt help dietpi. Still no audio output 
That amixer command fails on acodec so I guess its different on c4 than n2?
Can you check alsamixer whether you see another volume control that makes a difference?
I split the audio topic into a new thread.