AMD Radeon HD 6250/6480G, No HDMI audio output with radeon driver by default

[Po-Hsu Lin]

CID: 201203-10697 Asus X55U (12.04.2)

By default the radeon driver has no HDMI audio output.

WORKAROUND: Use the fglrx driver.

WORKAROUND: With the radeon driver use kernel parameter:
radeon.audio=1

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: linux-image-3.5.0-32-generic 3.5.0-32.53~precise1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-32.53~precise1-generic 3.5.7.11
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-32-generic x86_64
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.25.
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.2
Architecture: amd64
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 1: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: VT1802 Analog [VT1802 Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/2
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
   Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC1: ubuntu 1663 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/pcmC1D0c: ubuntu 1663 F...m pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC0: ubuntu 1663 F.... pulseaudio
CRDA:
 country TW:
  (2402 - 2472 @ 40), (3, 27)
  (5270 - 5330 @ 40), (3, 17), DFS
  (5735 - 5815 @ 40), (3, 30)
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Generic'/'HD-Audio Generic at 0xfeb44000 irq 47'
   Mixer name : 'ATI R6xx HDMI'
   Components : 'HDA:1002aa01,00aa0100,00100200'
   Controls : 6
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card0.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [on]
Card1.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:1 'Generic_1'/'HD-Audio Generic at 0xfeb40000 irq 16'
   Mixer name : 'VIA VT1802'
   Components : 'HDA:11068446,10431c23,00100000'
   Controls : 28
   Simple ctrls : 16
Date: Mon Jun 3 14:11:32 2013
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=fdaaa1bf-4281-4fdc-a2cf-8ae08a9d29a4
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20130213)
Lsusb:
 Bus 001 Device 002: ID 058f:a014 Alcor Micro Corp.
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
MachineType: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. X55U
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcFB: 0 radeondrmfb
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-32-generic root=UUID=d034ccfb-863a-43af-ba1c-4e8d6a4638bc ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-restricted-modules-3.5.0-32-generic N/A
 linux-backports-modules-3.5.0-32-generic N/A
 linux-firmware 1.79.4
SourcePackage: linux
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 09/03/2012
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: X55U.410
dmi.board.asset.tag: ATN12345678901234567
dmi.board.name: X55U
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
dmi.board.version: 1.0
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Tag
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
dmi.chassis.version: 1.0
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvrX55U.410:bd09/03/2012:svnASUSTeKCOMPUTERINC.:pnX55U:pvr1.0:rvnASUSTeKCOMPUTERINC.:rnX55U:rvr1.0:cvnASUSTeKCOMPUTERINC.:ct10:cvr1.0:
dmi.product.name: X55U
dmi.product.version: 1.0
dmi.sys.vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This change was made by a bot.

[Po-Hsu Lin (cypressyew)]

Also affects 201206-11418 Dell Inspiron N5425 [Radeon 7500/7600M Series]

[Po-Hsu Lin (cypressyew)]

Please ignore #3, which was a different card and reported elsewhere (bug 1190890)

[madbiologist (me-again)]

HDMI audio on AMD/ATI GPUs has been disabled by the upstream kernel developers as it causes blank screens on a lot of systems.

You can re-enable HDMI audio by adding radeon.audio=1 to your GRUB kernel boot options as described at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Troubleshooting#Editing_the_GRUB_2_Menu_During_Boot

[Po-Hsu Lin (cypressyew)]

Also affects AMD Radeon HD 6480G [1002:9648] on 201107-8258 Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E525
Verified with radeon.audio=1, HDMI audio works

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Po-Hsu Lin, the requirement for radeon.audio=1 on all AMD cards has been so since:
Author: Alex Deucher <email address hidden> 2011-06-06 16:39:16
Committer: Dave Airlie <email address hidden> 2011-06-08 05:14:41
Parent: 62fff811d73095bd95579d72f558f03c78f7914a (drm/radeon/kms: fix for radeon on systems >4GB without hardware iommu)
Child: 18367c0ec73671fbfea35f13ae52d39437c53eb5 (Merge branch 'drm-radeon-urgent' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/airlied/drm-2.6)
Branches: master, remotes/origin/master
Follows: v3.0-rc2
Precedes: v3.0-rc3

    drm/radeon/kms: disable hdmi audio by default

    The current RE'd code causes blank screens and
    display problems on a lot of systems. So disable
    it by default for now. It can still be enabled
    by setting the audio parameter to 1. E.g.:
    radeon.audio=1

    Fixes:
    https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38010
    https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27731
    https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35970
    https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26195
    and many other reported problems.

    Signed-off-by: Alex Deucher <email address hidden>
    Signed-off-by: Dave Airlie <email address hidden>

I'm not aware of an initiative to quirk on a per hardware basis enabling hdmi audio by default. It seems this was preventative as too many collateral damage reports were being filed with it enabled. The WORKAROUND is now explicitly documented in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver .

Given this, what would you like the end game for this report to be?

[madbiologist (me-again)]

The upstream 3.13 kernel is currently under development. The radeon.audio=1 kernel boot option will no longer be necessary with this kernel. Instead, HDMI audio on ATI/AMD Radeon cards can be enabled and disabled on the fly by typing the following in a terminal window:

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set audio on

or

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set audio auto

or

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set audio off

The default setting is auto.

The 3.13-rc2 kernel is currently available at http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ and instructions on how to install and uninstall it are available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds

[penalvch (penalvch)]

madbiologist, unfortunately this is not the case for as recent as 3.13-rc2 due to commit 108dc8e8b44a4c64ac53676cc05f6234340ccd4a so testing at this point is unnecessary:
Author: Alex Deucher <email address hidden> 2013-10-14 12:17:50
Committer: Alex Deucher <email address hidden> 2013-10-18 15:16:19
    drm/radeon: rework audio option
    In 3.12 I changed audio to be enabled by default, but you still had to turn it on via xrandr. This was confusing to users so change it to minic the previous behavior:
    - audio option is set to -1 (auto) by default which is the current 3.12 behavior (audio is enabled but requires xrandr to turn it on).
    - if audio = 1, the audio is enabled without needing to mess with xrandr (previous behavior)
    - audio = 0 disables audio
    It retains the new feature of allowing the user to enable audio on the fly with xrandr, but turns audio on automatically if radeon.audio=1 is set which is what most users expect.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

I think we are saying almost the same thing, although I thought that auto meant the HDMI audio was on by default.

It's good to know that the radeon.audio=1 kernel boot option once again does what it used to do. It's also a great improvement that this option is no longer necessary due to the ability to turn on the HDMI audio by issuing the "xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set audio on" command instead.

Note to people whose HDMI port is numbered differently (type "xrandr" to check) - you might need to change HDMI-0 in the above command to HDMI-1 or HDMI-2.