A Fix Is On The Way For AMD HDMI Audio Being Broken With Linux 6.1+

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Fix Is On The Way For AMD HDMI Audio Being Broken With Linux 6.1+

More than a few Phoronix readers have written in that have been early adopters to the Linux 6.1 kernel released as stable earlier this month and now finding their HDMI audio outputs no longer working. Fortunately, the issue has been sorted out by upstream developers and a fix is on the way...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-HDMI-Audio-Linux-6.1-Fix

[gukin]

Thanks for this Michael, I've got a Lenovo Thinkpad T16 AMD with a 6850U and have had some trouble with pulseaudio but pipewire was fine, well until I moved to 6.1 and then HDMI broke. One has to deal with odd bits when one purchases the latest hardware.

[ALRBP]

What is this about ? I have 6.1.0 RDNA 3, previously Polaris, with Pipewire and HDMI audio works like a charm (I use it daily).

[Chugworth]

I actually just recently switched from using HDMI audio to TOSLINK, but that was just before the 6.1 upgrade. The audio kept randomly cutting out for a second. Strange thing though is that didn't seem to happen in Windows.

Another annoyance that I've long noticed with HDMI audio in Linux is that if you're watching a video, pause it for a little while, and then resume it, it takes a second or two before the audio comes back on. Again that doesn't happen in Windows.

On the other hand, Linux can output all audio through TOSLINK as Dolby 5.1 whereas Windows will only do it as stereo PCM.

[Etherman]

What is this about ? I have 6.1.0 RDNA 3, previously Polaris, with Pipewire audio and HDMI audio works like a charm (I use it daily).

I haven't noticed anything on my very old radeon connected to TV either.

[Vorpal]

Another annoyance that I've long noticed with HDMI audio in Linux is that if you're watching a video, pause it for a little while, and then resume it, it takes a second or two before the audio comes back on. Again that doesn't happen in Windows.

I don't know for HDMI audio specifically, but I have seen behaviour like this (as well as other weirdness) caused by audio devices going into power saving modes. Might be worth investigating if that is turned on.

[Kabbone]

at least on nixos with 6.1.1 and a Ryzen 5700G I didn't experience the problems.
I can't tell if this started with 6.1 but my HDMI Audio Outputs switches sometimes the enumeration of the 2 HDMI Ports when dpms turns on/off, but audio still works if you switch

[devling]

I'm on 6.1 / AMD and using HDMI output right now, and it's working like a charm. I assume there is some edge case / specific setup affected by this?

Screenshot_20221229_104216.png

[TumultuousUnicorn]

I had a similar issue since I upgraded to Linux 6.1 with my Radeon RX 580: I changed the audio profile by using Pavucontrol from "Digital Stereo output (HDMI 4) (unplugged) (unavailable)" to "Digitial Stereo output (HDMI)", and the sound is back.

[brent]

And this is why you should never use a x.x.0 kernel release. Personally, I always wait for at x.x.5 at least.