[alsa-devel] Creative ca0132 on Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7 motherboard: no sound

[Takashi Iwai]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 03:47:23 +0100,
Scott Doty wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Didn't see a response on alsa-user, so thought I'd better roll up my
> sleeves and get to work. :)
> 
> The ca0132 codec seems to do everything on my Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7
> motherboard but make sound.  I can see the mixer settings, change them,
> even see the DSP settings -- but no sound out, either with HP or SPDIF.
> 
>   
> http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=6373811de293125e4e8c345c0c2d4a736c1fc2b8
> 
> I do see this in the startup messages:
> 
> [    9.314893] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: Handle vga_switcheroo audio
> client
> [    9.321116] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: failed to add i915 component
> master (-19)
> 
> I've tried all the fixes I could find reference to, as well as using
> iecset, but no joy.  I also tried editing the driver to disable the
> "vga_switcheroo" flag, but that didn't work either.  (Which is too bad,
> I thought that would be a quick fix that I could report. :/ )
> 
> If someone could point me in the right direction, I think I can
> investigate this and get it working.

I guess this is a very long-standing known issue with CA0132 codec
support.  The codec driver, or more exactly, the given firmware blob,
is very specific to some models (Chromebook Pixel, the old Creative
CA0132 boards and some old Alienware machines), and the recent
Creative models don't work with it well.

There have been some struggles, but no good solution found yet.
  https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111021


Takashi