Takashi Iwai has mailed in the sound updates for the
Linux 3.9 kernel. This Git pull has the much anticipated
HDA Intel audio re-work.
The biggest highlight of the sound updates for Linux 3.9 is the unification of the HD Audio codec driver so that there's now a generic parser that is used by each HDA codec driver. This big fundamental audio change is covered in more detail in
the earlier Phoronix article.
The Linux 3.9 kernel will also bear
ALSA SoC audio improvements (ASoC), USB audio updates, support for the new Intel HD audio controller with new IDT codecs, HDMI audio fixes, support for the Creative CA0132 DSP, compress API updates for gapless playback audio, and various other random fixes.
These audio changes for the Linux 3.9 kernel merge window are listed within
Takashi's pull request.