The in-kernel firmware loaders are also completely broken right now due to the movement of the loader to userspace causing a deadlock in the load process. systemd tries to probe the USB topology when handling the firmware request, but the current loader is synchronous, so each blocks on the other.
I wrote a complete, new unified emi26/26 loader last year... and it got bogged down in 'what is the license on the firmware anyway?' like it has for all the submissions I've made regarding the 26/62 in the past five years :-(
If you want just the loader and/or firmware update patches (we're also shipping an unreleased alpha of the firmware IIRC, and there are numerous bugs later releases fixed. Oh and they add 96kHz support), write me. I've been using the most recent version for the past year wihthout problems.
Oh, actually, there is one problem, but it's not the loader: disconnecting a device in use now hangs the entire USB subsystem until reboot about 50% of the time, but that bug is there with the old loader too.
Monty