Valve Steam Deck OLED audio issue fixed in mainline Linux 7.1 kernel
SteamOS was not affected by this problem.
Steam Deck OLED users running mainline Linux kernels should finally get working audio without downstream patches. A fix has been merged for Linux 7.1 to address an audio probe issue affecting Valve’s OLED handheld.
According to Phoronix, the issue was introduced by an AMD ASoC change merged for Linux 6.8. The change affected the AMD Audio Co-Processor driver and broke audio probing on the Steam Deck OLED. The original Steam Deck LCD model was not affected.
“Commit 671dd2ffbd8b introduced a change that “broke” Steam Deck’s audio probe, in the OLED model
Notice the quotes in “broke”: it’s not really a bug in such commit, but instead a problem with a topology file from Steam Deck OLED. This was discussed to great extent in, and Cristian proposed a pretty simple and functional change that resolved the issue for the Deck’s issue. That change, though, would break other devices, so it wasn’t accepted upstream. And the proper suggested solution (fix the topology) was never implemented, so Valve’s kernel (and anyone that wants to boot the mainline on Steam Deck OLED) is carrying that fix downstream.
So, we propose hereby a different approach: a DMI quirk, as many already present in the sound drivers, to address this issue solely on Steam Deck OLED, not breaking other devices and as a bonus, allowing simple patch up in case eventually the topology file gets fixed (we’d just need to check against any DMI info reflecting that or the topology/FW versions).
The motivation of such upstream quirk is related to users that want to test latest kernel trees on their devices and get no only non-working sound device, but seems some games (like Ori and the Blind Forest) can’t properly work without a proper functional audio device.”
SteamOS was not affected, but distros using the mainline Linux kernel were
The engineer working on the fix explained that the Steam Deck OLED has an issue with its audio topology file. Valve’s SteamOS kernel has carried a workaround , and other Steam Deck-focused distributions also patched around the problem.
The upstream fix uses a DMI quirk for the Steam Deck OLED. This limits the workaround to Valve’s OLED model and avoids changing behavior for other AMD ACP devices. The patch was merged as part of the ASoC fixes for Linux 7.1.
Source: Phoronix
