PHAT DAC on R Pi 4b not recognized?

@psollich wrote:

I have trouble getting the PHAT DAC to work under Raspbian Buster on a Raspberry Pi 4b with 4GB RAM, both in “generic” audio and from Kodi.

Apologies right up front if the following are stupid questions. I’ve tried to google for solutions including on the Pimoroni forums but not got anywhere.

Here’s the rundown:

• Using the installation script https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/phat/raspberry-pi-phat-dac-install
  I got the PHAT DAC to work fine for generic audio (e.g. from YouTube running in a web browser); both the line out and the dual phono connector worked. (A relief, as my soldering skills are limited and I was worried I might have fried the chip…)

But Kodi (18.4, installed as per https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=251645), while it listed the PHAT DAC as “hifiberry” as a potential audio output device, didn’t actually produce any sound if I switched to it. It worked fine on the Pi’s normal HDMI output.

• I then installed the Fan Shim from Pimoroni, again following the standard script from the website.

• Rebooting, I found that now the PHAT DAC doesn’t work even for generic audio. If I try “aplay -l” I get the output
  **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
  card 0: sndrpihifiberry [snd_rpi_hifiberry_dac], device 0: HifiBerry DAC HiFi pcm5102a-hifi-0
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

which looks different from before (where it was “subdevices 1/1”).

• I’ve tried to reinstall the PHAT DAC as above. If I let the script run the audio test at the end, I get an error along the lines of
  “Unable to open decide: -16, device or resource busy”
  I’ve checked all the files referred to in the “Manual install” section of the PHAT DAC installation instructions and they look ok.

• Less seriously, but in case it helps to diagnose the problem, if I try to change the Pi’s volume from the Main menu I can’t because of an error “no ALSA devices found”

The question, then, is in two parts: How can I reactive the PHAT DAC for generic audio, and how do I then make sure Kodi can also produce output through it? If there are log files I should dig out, please let me know.

Many thanks in advance.

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