Linux 5.1 Should Sound Great... Well, At Least Work With More Audio Hardware

The sound subsystem updates were submitted today for the upcoming Linux 5.1 kernel cycle. The pull request was submitted early due to the maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE traveling next week, but this is another exciting PR for audio hardware on Linux.

Some of the sound subsystem/driver updates for Linux 5.1 include:

- Support for the Fireface UCX high-end audio hardware:

- Improvements to the core ALSA code.

- The ASoC core now supports only powering up channels that are actively being used, which can help conserve power.

- A new driver is the MediaTek BTCVSD for a Bluetooth radio chip and their first to have upstream. The driver enables the transferring/receiving of the BT-encoded data to/from the firmware and was contributed by MediaTek themselves.

- Various probing fixes for Intel hardware.

- New drivers for Asahi Kasei Microdevices AK4497, Cirrus Logic CS4341/CS35L26, Google ChromeOS embedded controllers, Ingenic JZ4725B, MediaTek BTCVSD, MT8183 and MT6358, NXP MICFIL, Rockchip RK3328, Spreadtrum DMA controllers, Qualcomm WCD9335, Xilinx S/PDIF and PCM formatters.

- The usual slew of HD audio quirks being added, this time around affecting some ASUS laptops, Dell workstations, and Chrome headset button.

- Support for Solid State Logic Duende Classic/Mini as some additional high-end audio hardware now working off the mainline kernel though not exactly new hardware.

More details on the sound feature changes for Linux 5.1 via this pull request.