Intel's Skylake Audio Firmware Lands

[Turtleggjp]

So, is this just for the HDMI audio outputs? I was just looking at a Skylake motherboard, and it says it has a realtek audio chip on board. I would assume this firmware is not needed for this audio to work.

[leech]

I have a skylake motherboard, the Asus MAXIMUS VIII HERO. This would explain why I see this when I look at the logs;

[ 0.649398] intel_idle: does not run on family 6 model 94
[ 3.097343] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: Disabling MSI
[ 3.097346] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: Handle VGA-switcheroo audio client
[ 3.097377] snd_hda_intel 0000:02:00.1: Disabling MSI
[ 3.097379] snd_hda_intel 0000:02:00.1: Handle VGA-switcheroo audio client
[ 3.153793] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: failed to add i915 component master (-19)

This motherboard has the 'Supreme FX' sound on it, but unfortunately it has a bit of a wheeze in it when I plug in my headphones, though that may be due to my case.

[caligula]

Sound chips on motherboards should be banned. They always seem to have issues with sound isolation. The headphone amplifiers suck and can't drive difficult loads. Drivers suck. It also requires space on board and you need to upgrade it every time you update the motherboard even if you were perfectly happy with the old sound chip. On top of that new headphones directly connect to USB-C and have an integrated DAC+amp. I'm pretty sure that with current generation CPUs you can easily do the DSP on software and just use USB sound cards or I?C.

I've used an external USB sound card for few years now. The current one directly PWM outputs the audio without ADC/DAC. It's perfectly good enough for the job.

[Calinou]

Sound chips on motherboards should be banned. They always seem to have issues with sound isolation. The headphone amplifiers suck and can't drive difficult loads. Drivers suck. It also requires space on board and you need to upgrade it every time you update the motherboard even if you were perfectly happy with the old sound chip. On top of that new headphones directly connect to USB-C and have an integrated DAC+amp. I'm pretty sure that with current generation CPUs you can easily do the DSP on software and just use USB sound cards or I?C.

I've used an external USB sound card for few years now. The current one directly PWM outputs the audio without ADC/DAC. It's perfectly good enough for the job.

Since Haswell, on-board sound cards are very good. Even my Z77 motherboard has pretty decent audio (Realtek ALC898).

[Danny3]

I left Windows exactly to get away from this proprietary crap and mass surveilance
Now I get Intel who's infesting Linux with firmware (spyware, backdoors) everywhere
No wonder it is NSA's favorite company
So from now on we have to cut the wires on the mic to be sure is not recording us?

[konserw]

nope - go for red team
Or use microphone with physical switch (i.e. not laptop with built-in one)
Perfectly satisfied AMD CPU+GPU PC user here

[ZeDestructor]

*sigh*

Such panic and worry over here...

All the codecs by and large have little firmwares embedded (very likely BIOS) and present a standard HDA or AC'97 interface to the rest of the PC. By the looks of it, all that Intel is doing is moving that firmware into the OS/driver bundle and flashing it on boot rather than having it done by the UEFI. I see precious little change from the current status quo, really...

[torsionbar28]

*sigh*

Such panic and worry over here...

All the codecs by and large have little firmwares embedded (very likely BIOS) and present a standard HDA or AC'97 interface to the rest of the PC. By the looks of it, all that Intel is doing is moving that firmware into the OS/driver bundle and flashing it on boot rather than having it done by the UEFI. I see precious little change from the current status quo, really...

Sure, but that won't stop the conspiracy theorists from imagining bizarre and implausible NSA plots. Nor the tinfoil hat crackpots, from parroting said theories, as if they were facts.

[quaz0r]

Sure, but that won't stop the conspiracy theorists from imagining bizarre and implausible NSA plots. Nor the tinfoil hat crackpots, from parroting said theories, as if they were facts.

the point of course is that there simply is no place for black box binary blobs on what is intended to be a free and open system like linux. the point is not that we know there is horrible stuff in any particular black box. the point of course is that we DON'T know. that is not a conspiracy theory, that is simply the plain factual reality of what it means to be a black box.

a normal, rational person understands this. it is only those with a vested interest who take the time to hiss and howl about tin hats and conspiracy theories, insisting that it is all the insane ramblings of frothy-mouthed schizophrenics to so much as raise a question about these issues. a black box is the opposite of transparency. your antics on the other hand are as transparent as it gets.

[nils_]

Sure, but that won't stop the conspiracy theorists from imagining bizarre and implausible NSA plots. Nor the tinfoil hat crackpots, from parroting said theories, as if they were facts.

I do find it worrying that government incompetence is pretty much the only thing that keeps those criminals from doing it.