[Sound-open-firmware] Changing Fedora 34 default driver for BYT + CHT back to SST?

[Pierre-Louis Bossart]

On 3/19/21 11:58 AM, Hans de Goede wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> First of all this is NOT intended as a way to get more attention to recently
> noticed BYT/CHT bugs. I realize it may feel that way but that is not my intention.
> My goal of this email is to have a honest discussion about what will be
> the best driver to use by default for BYT/CHT for Fedora 34.
> 
> With that said, there are a number of SOF related issues with audio on BYT/CHT
> devices, some recent issues and one issue which is fixed, but only in 1.7 for
> which no release has been made yet:
> 
> "[BUG][BYT][CHT] Output channel left/right swap on various BYT/CHT devices with various codecs"
> https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/issues/3699
> Status: Fixed in master, but still present in latest sof-bin release (1.6.1)
> 
> "[BUG][BYT][CHT] Linux 5.11 Cherrytrail/rt5640 emits persistent beeping sound after a short while"
> https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/issues/3868
> Status: Still being investigated.
> 
> "[BUG][CHT] loud crackle from speakers at boot, which does not happen with SST driver"
> https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/issues/3932
> Status: Still being investigated.
> 
> "[BUG][BYT] SOF hangs, logger shows "dw_dma_start(): dma 1 channel 1 not ready" error"
> https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/issues/3937
> Status: Still being investigated, configuring pipewire to use 16 bits samples
> seems to be a workaround (but I did manage to trigger 3868 in that configuration)
> 
> The crackle is more of an annoyance then a blocker (but it is quite annoying),
> but the 2 beep/hang bugs are kinda showstoppers IMHO.
> 
> As such ATM I believe that the best way forward is for me to flip the default
> for Fedora 34 back to SST during the coming week (before the final freeze kicks in)
> and then to try again with Fedora 35.

Thanks for sharing Hans. It's disappointing that we still see such 
instability on old hardware, but yes at the moment I don't see how such 
issues might be fixed short term. I don't think anyone on the Intel side 
has switched to pipewire and we also have limited number of test 
devices. I have also lost track of when 1.7 might be released.