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#1 2025-02-01 02:07:27

rodhlann
Member
Registered: 2025-02-01
Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Sound Blaster Recon3Di Firmware Failing to Load

Hey all, I am setting up my first arch install and have been having some issues getting my desktop speakers working.

I am using pipewire-pulse as my audio service, and my usb wireless corsair headphones are picked up and work as expected, and my NVIDIA HDMI outputs are picked up, though I am not using them for anything currently. I am using NVIDIA proprietary drivers.

I used the archinstall tooling to install Arch, and the logs can be found here:
https://gist.github.com/Rodhlann/3c799d … a8b7a3c377

I found some similar threads in the forums including this one, which seems pretty close to the issues I'm experiencing:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=295862

From those threads I saw suggestions to install `sof-firmware` and to blacklist `snd_soc_avs`, neither of which seemed to work for me.

I also have been inspecting my  journal at startup:
https://gist.github.com/Rodhlann/5d35e6 … 58fef3ad2b

And noticed today that I was getting this error:
snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: Direct firmware load for ctefx-r3di.bin failed with error -2

This is the Sound Blaster Recon3Di firmware, and the failure here seems like this is likely the root cause of my audio issues, but I'm not sure why the driver is failing.

If I could get any assistance here it would be much appreciated! I think this audio issue is the last major issue before I can fully settle in to Arch life!

Thanks in advance.

Last edited by rodhlann (2025-02-05 21:00:31)

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#2 2025-02-01 03:19:34

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 23,960

Re: [SOLVED] Sound Blaster Recon3Di Firmware Failing to Load

a single one off line to that effect is often normal, and simply means the driver will fallback to using the on device firmware. according to that log things are detected properly (

 snd_hda_codec_ca0132 hdaudioC0D0: ca0132 DSP downloaded and running

is the magic line here), however creative recon3d have always been troubled. but from a "detection" perspective everything is here, do you get devices for that?

aplay -lL
pactl list cards
pactl list sinks

also what's your speaker setup, I faintly remember this card only working properly with digital out, but afaik there have been some improvements since I last dealt with a recon3d card (in my old PC from 2015, I eventually ended up putting in a dedicated ASUS Xonar to avoid the Recon3D shenanigans)

Last edited by V1del (2025-02-01 03:22:47)

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#3 2025-02-01 22:24:04

rodhlann
Member
Registered: 2025-02-01
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Sound Blaster Recon3Di Firmware Failing to Load

Ah how heartbreaking! I was sure I was on to something there.

aplay output: https://gist.github.com/Rodhlann/026b36 … c2b98bf38b

I think that the HDA Intel PCH, CA-132 Analog set as the Default Audio Device here is what I am looking for?

card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: CA0132 Analog [CA0132 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

pactl cards output: https://gist.github.com/Rodhlann/69f578 … c072d36d5e

For this cards I believe the Card #1822 Name: alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3 is the correct card, and it is appearing in there.

pactl sinks output: https://gist.github.com/Rodhlann/63327c … 9b4623c32e

The related sink does not seem to be showing up. My understanding is that the sink is the actual audio output device, so this seems like an issue!

For my speakers I am using a crappy old set of Dell Desktop speakers that plug in to the Line-Out speaker jack on the motherboard.

As an additional note, I have run alsamixer and have gone through HDA Intel PCH sound card and unmuted everything. I am expected to see it in the KDE Audio GUI as a selection, but nothing is showing up for me in there, I assume this is due to the sinks issue.

I appreciate your rapid feedback!

Last edited by rodhlann (2025-02-01 22:25:15)

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#4 2025-02-04 23:04:01

rodhlann
Member
Registered: 2025-02-01
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Sound Blaster Recon3Di Firmware Failing to Load

Update: I haven't resolved this issue, but I found these two ancient reddit threads about getting this working with patched drivers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SoundBlasterOf … ux_driver/

https://www.reddit.com/r/SoundBlasterOf … xrzxriae5/

And this poor soul who was in my boat a decade ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comm … n3di_work/

Mostly appending here so there is a full record of my findings in the event someone else stumbles across this in the future! I think trying to use a 5-6 year old patch probably won't get me very far... I'm not aware of any additional strides made for these sound drivers, and I imagine the longer we go the less it will be an issue for folks as they upgrade out of this hardware.

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#5 2025-02-04 23:52:05

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 23,960

Re: [SOLVED] Sound Blaster Recon3Di Firmware Failing to Load

sorry this one fell of the radar a bit, from a pulse perspective you're simply on an incorrect profile:

pactl set-card-profile alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3 output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo

also  try a plain

speaker-test -Dhw:0 -c2

if this works then it is simply up to incorrect profile selection.

If neither of these work, throw in a

sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
amixer -c0

Last edited by V1del (2025-02-04 23:52:43)

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#6 2025-02-05 02:33:28

rodhlann
Member
Registered: 2025-02-01
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Sound Blaster Recon3Di Firmware Failing to Load

Hey! The first command worked right away! Just had to select the right options in the Audio tool from that point. Thank you so much! This puts me at full usability of my new Arch system!

If you have the time, could you describe the process you would typically take to troubleshoot this sort of thing? I do have some Linux experience, but this was a real head scratcher and had me feeling pretty far out of my depth!

Last edited by rodhlann (2025-02-05 02:34:11)

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#7 2025-02-05 13:18:51

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 23,960

Re: [SOLVED] Sound Blaster Recon3Di Firmware Failing to Load

The same commands I asked you for originally, aplay -lL will tell us how it looks like on an ALSA/kernel level. If the device you're looking for does not actually show up there you can give up on pulseaudio/a KDE gui showing you anything, then something is fundamentally wrong on the kernel level (or you broke your ALSA config with something invalid, not generally the case on a fresh system intended to be handled via pulse/pipewire) at that point you'd look at dmesg/journal (which in your case shows things are fine from a kernel level, which is why I asked for the other outputs) if aplay -l is fine, then a speaker-test -Dhw:0 -c2 that will try to play white noise directly to the hardware (card 0, device 0 if you check aplay -l).

if that doesn't work you're either muted in alsamixer or somethings wrong on the HW/driver level. If that works you can start looking at the higher layers, in which case pactl list cards showed that you've simply hidden the output profile and were only on an input/mic profile. these kind of things would also be reflected in the GUI, on KDE if you open up the "advanced settings* by clicking the relevant button in the panel addon you should have a "Configuration" tab which allows you to select profiles, once you pick one that has an actual output associated with it (which we've done with the equivalent pactl set-card-profile command) it will show up under sinks, and thus show up in KDE mixer tools as a possible audio output device,

The biggest question mark in this case is why you landed on an input/mic only profile, seemingly by default (unless you accidentally switched the profile in the UI at some point), as under normal circumstances, if a card has not yet any metadata associated with it (read you have not yet consciously selected a profile like we did now), the default profile is selected based on the priority (if you recheck pactl list cards and the available profiles the higher the priority the more likely should one be picked by default) this could be a bug in wireplumber/pipewire that they accidentally reversed their priority selection (which then would make sense again because mic only has the lowest priority value outside of the special cases off and pro audio).  There could also be some special interactions at play if you e.g. carried over your home dir from a previous installation/system that cache lookups get confused... But that's somewhat of a speculation... FWIW if you want to try and check whether that's indeed a wireplumber bug you could try to

systemctl --user mask wireplumber pipewire pipewire-pulse --now
rm -r ~/.local/state/wireplumber #Reset wireplumber state
systemctl --user unmask wireplumber pipewire pipewire-pulse --now

and check which profile gets selected by default now.

In any case, if you consider this [SOLVED] please mark it as such by editing the title in your first post (might have to shorten a bit if it is too long)

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#8 2025-02-05 21:07:44

rodhlann
Member
Registered: 2025-02-01
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Sound Blaster Recon3Di Firmware Failing to Load

Thanks for the info! I have no idea how the profile was hidden.

I ran through those commands and it did reset the state as expected, and the analog stereo input was set to headphones instead of the Line Out. Everything seems to be configured as expected otherwise, so it's highly likely that there was immediate (forgotten) user error as I was initially exploring my new system.

Thanks again for all the help here, I genuinely appreciate your patience and knowledge! Marked as [SOLVED]

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