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Cirrus Logic Sound Fusion CS4280, CS461x, CS462x, CS463x devices

This page describes how to enable support for sound devices based on CS46xx chipsets on Debian systems.

snd-cs46xx is a Linux kernel module supporting Cirrus Logic's Sound Fusion CS46xx audio controllers. It is an ALSA driver included in the Linux kernel.

At linux-2.6 2.6.23-1, the binary-only firmware in this driver was removed due to licensing issues. The driver was disabled at this time. Firmware was also removed from the alsa-source package to resolve bug 483918.

At linux-2.6 2.6.31-1~experimental.1, the snd-cs46xx driver was re-enabled and patched to use firmware from userspace (resolving Debian bug 464197).

Device firmware is unable to be distributed by the Debian project, as the snd-cs46xx driver has no license.¹ A free redistribution license has been requested from Cirrus Logic.²

Installation

Debian 7 "Wheezy"

You are required to supply one firmware file for device use.

1. Install the alsa-base, alsa-utils and build-essential packages:

   $ su
   # aptitude update && aptitude install alsa-base alsa-utils build-essential
   # exit

2. Download cs46xx_image.h from Linus' kernel tree:

   $ wget https://raw.github.com/torvalds/linux/v3.2/sound/pci/cs46xx/cs46xx_image.h

3. Download source code for a program to write out firmware from cs46xx_image.h:

   $ wget 'https://wiki.debian.org/snd-cs46xx?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=write_images.c' -O write_images.c

4. Download a patch against cs46xx_image.h:

   $ wget 'https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=181;att=0;bug=464197' -O cs46xx_image.diff

5. Apply the patch:

   $ patch -i cs46xx_image.diff

6. Compile the write_images program:

   $ gcc -o write_images write_images.c

7. Execute the program to write out firmware:

   $ ./write_images

8. Install the firmware:

   $ su
   # mkdir /lib/firmware/cs46xx
   # cp cs46xx/cs46xx-old.fw /lib/firmware/cs46xx

9. Reload the snd-cs46xx module:

   # modprobe -r snd-cs46xx ; modprobe snd-cs46xx

10. If not already performed, add your user account to the audio group, then log out and log back into your system:

    # adduser yourusername audio
    # exit
    $ exit

11. Run alsamixer(1) to unmute channels and raise the volume levels.

12. Test the sound device, for example:

    $ aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Noise.wav
    $ speaker-test -t sine -f 440 -c 2
    $ speaker-test -t wav -c 2

Troubleshooting

• Examine the kernel ring buffer (dmesg(1)) to verify firmware is being loaded.

  • If output similar to the following is shown:

    [16576.681738] Sound Fusion CS46xx 0000:00:06.0: found PCI INT A -> IRQ 11
    [16576.681774] Sound Fusion CS46xx 0000:00:06.0: sharing IRQ 11 with 0000:00:02.0
    [16576.681827] Sound Fusion CS46xx 0000:00:06.0: sharing IRQ 11 with 0000:01:00.0
    [16577.224760] Sound Fusion CS46xx 0000:00:06.0: firmware: requesting cs46xx/cs46xx-old.fw
    [16577.403887] cs46xx: firmware hunk out of range
    [16577.406087] image download error
    [16577.412213] Sound Fusion CS46xx: probe of 0000:00:06.0 failed with error

    The firmware is not in the correct format.

    • Ensure the patch for cs46xx_image.h is applied prior to compiling write_images.c.

    • Ensure write_images is executed on a system where unsigned long is little-endian 32-bit.

Supported Devices

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo snd-cs46xx in Debian 3.2.0 (3.2.65-1+deb7u2) kernel images.

• PCI: 1013:6001 Cirrus Logic CS 4610/11 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator]
  PCI: 1013:6003 Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24/30 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator]
  PCI: 1013:6004 Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator]

See Also

• ALSA

• KernelFirmwareLicensing

CategoryHardware | CategorySound