It looks like there's some problem somewhere in the patch set posted on Oct. 7th that wasn't in the original patch set from the 5th: I can't open the mixer for the HDA device:
alsamixer -c 1 cannot load mixer controls: Operation not permitted
_From strace:
open("/dev/snd/controlC1", O_RDWR) = 3 ioctl(3, USBDEVFS_CONTROL, 0x7fff338e57fc) = 0 fcntl(3, F_GETFL) = 0x8002 (flags O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE) fcntl(3, F_SETFL, O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK|O_LARGEFILE) = 0 ioctl(3, USBDEVFS_RELEASEINTERFACE, 0x7fff338e5990) = 0 ioctl(3, USBDEVFS_RELEASEINTERFACE, 0x7fff338e5990) = 0 ioctl(3, USBDEVFS_CONNECTINFO, 0x7fff338e5670) = 0 ioctl(3, USBDEVFS_IOCTL, 0x7fff338e4ea0) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted)
Presumably something is creating a control that isn't readable, or writable or something, and this is causing the mixer to fail to load?
Also, with regard to the SPDIF problem I'm seeing on my Asus P7P55D (VT1828S), I was able to dig up a little bit more info: by using hda_analyzer to set the ENABLE flag on the Digital Converter, I was able to get the optical SPDIF port to light up and my receiver indicates PCM input. Unfortunately there's still no actual audio coming through on the receiver, just silence. However, obviously that ENABLE flag is going to have to get set somehow to have any hope of SPDIF working, and currently it seems like it's not..