Arch Linux

Corubba

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-11-14

Posts: 86

[PATCH] ASUS Essence STX II

Today I got my new sound card, a ASUS Essence STX II. It was released 3 month ago and is not listed on the official alsa page. After plugin it into my PC and booting my Arch install, it is recognized as Multimedia audio controller by lspci, but alsa didn't see it.

% sudo lspci -nnvk
03:04.0 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: C-Media Electronics Inc CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio] [13f6:8788]
	Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:85f4]
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 16
	I/O ports at d000 [size=256]
	Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2

The information in general about linux support on that card is hard to find. The hardware similarities to the "old" Essence STX are quiet high, so I dived into the driver source myself to see if I can hack a little bit to get it working.

The result is this little patch. Apply it to the kernel source (I used the PKGBUILD from the official kernel package for convenience), build, install and be happy.

% aplay -L                                                                                                                                                                                     :(
front:CARD=II,DEV=0
    Xonar STX II, Multichannel
    Front speakers
surround21:CARD=II,DEV=0
    Xonar STX II, Multichannel
    2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=II,DEV=0
    Xonar STX II, Multichannel
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=II,DEV=0
    Xonar STX II, Multichannel
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=II,DEV=0
    Xonar STX II, Multichannel
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=II,DEV=0
    Xonar STX II, Multichannel
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=II,DEV=0
    Xonar STX II, Multichannel
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=II,DEV=0
    Xonar STX II, Multichannel
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

This is just a quick'n'dirty workaround/hack to get the card working, but I haven't experienced any quirks until now (probably to the aforementioned similarities to the Essence STX). I don't have/use the H6 childboard for surround sound, so don't know about that part. But I wanted to share this little piece of information with everyone else in case someone wants to get it working, or maybe has an even better/cleaner idea/way to do it.

Greetz Corubba

emeres

Member

Registered: 2013-10-08

Posts: 1,570

Re: [PATCH] ASUS Essence STX II

Good job, thank you for the contribution. Could you post this on alsa mailing lists? Either the developer one or the user one. They could implement it or alter it if necessary, and push it into the next kernel release.

Edit: I suggest this, since I did not find anything on the mailing lists, but have not searched hard either.

Last edited by emeres (2014-08-02 18:18:11)

Corubba

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-11-14

Posts: 86

Re: [PATCH] ASUS Essence STX II

http://mailman.alsa-project.org/piperma … 79676.html

Patch was accepted with slight additions.

EDIT: The Essence STX II is now listed as supported device on the alsa homepage, with the patch being included in the 3.17 kernel release.

EDIT 2: The patch is included in the kernel 3.17-rc1, so it will definitely be shipped from upstream with the 3.17 kernel.

EDIT 3: The patch was added to the 3.10, 3.14 and 3.16 stable tree queue's today.

EDIT4: The today released version 3.16.2-1 of the core/linux package includes this patch. From this point on, the STX II should work out-of-the-box on a updated arch system.

Last edited by Corubba (2014-09-09 19:41:58)

kpaden1

Member

Registered: 2014-09-16

Posts: 1

Re: [PATCH] ASUS Essence STX II

I just wanted to thank you for posting this patch. I was having as much trouble with this card as I did my old Auzentech X-Meridian.  It is working great now.
Thanks again .