I decided to change my motherboard for different reasons. I’ll see if the issue is related to asus or not later today as I have ordered a MSI MEG X670E Ace motherboard to replace my Asus Pro Art Creator X670E. With luck this will fix it but I don’t have high hope. I’ll take a look at those links to see if I can’t find anything but I would have to work with the module maintainer to fix this probably.
I hope the MSI board helps. I have MSI also X570 and B550.
As expected that didn’t help so it’s not Asus. It’s most likely a “driver” or module thing in the kernel.
Sorry to hear that. I was hoping you get it to work.
Well I wasn’t able to fix it the way I would like it to work. I still cannot get the AE-7 to work (even boot any linux distro with it enabled) but since I changed my motherboard I now have a SPDIF out and 5.1 3x 3.5mm jacks) off the board so I can get audio from the motherboard instead of the sound card. I have disabled the sound card in modprobe using a conf file /etc/modprobe.d/snd_hda_intel.conf
added :
options snd_hda_intel enable=1,0,1
this will only work depending on the cards / audio device that uses that module in your system. So someone with the same issue would have to find the proper 1 and 0 sequence to disable the card. This option disable specific device in the snd_hda_intel drive so I disable the AE-7. I have plugged my speakers to the SPDIF connector for now and I have audio working. I would really like to use the analog connections 3x 3.5mm jack but my speakers system the Z906 only has one set so I either need to use SPDIF or find an analog switch for 3x 3.5mm which does not seem to be a popular thing or even existing unless I build one myself.
Thanks all those who help with this issue and if someone ever find a way to fix this properly i’ll gladly take more input later in the future.
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Safe to assume it is combination of card and X670E chipset.
With all this great digging, will you be submitting bug upstream?
Absolutely. I would like to but i’m not really sure how to debug this. I`ve scoured through the logs but I have hard time finding anything helpful at the moment even with the debug flag in the systemd-boot entry. Normally one should use the mainline linux kernel (6.4-rc2) but I believe that EOS does not boot even with the card not in (with mainline kernel) so it would be hard to debug as the arch kernel is a modified compiled kernel. I’m also not even sure where the bug is located. Is it a xhci_hcd issue, a sound_hda_intel bug or something related to the pci bus ? It would be easier for the devs if I could locate the bug module or where approximately it’s coming from. I have good knowledge of fixing things with a working environment but something that does not boot it’s a first for me.
Well someone beat me to it and opened a bugzilla upstream of the kernel :
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217510
I don’t want to interject in his bug report because it’s not really a forum but i’m glad i’m not alone.
i found this from searching because i have the same issue. just bought a ae-7. works wonderfully well in windows 11, but i cannot boot ANY linux at all. i don’t even get errors. just a hard freeze during the boot process when ~linux~ loads. i tried arch, endeavouros, and nobara linux. all same issue.
oddly enough if i put my old ae-5 i bought in 2018 back in, linux works just fine. but i bought the ae-7 because i fried the microphone port on my ae-5…
my hardware is a intel 13900k, msi z790 edge wifi ddr5, 64gb ddr5 6000, full specs: https://i.imgur.com/MrrvVpa.png
Hi Everyone,
An interesting update for all of you. AE-7 was fully working with Asus Dark Hero with any linux at all for the last 2 years however, now I’ve upgraded to AE-9 and I’ve started to have the same issue.
Cheers.
AE-9 has never had driver support on linux. but if you are getting the freezes / crashes during boot up that is interesting because that’s what i am getting with my AE-7. I can’t get into any Linux whatsoever because it hard freezes during boot up. I wonder if Creative updated the AE-7 to share more with the AE-9 that’s causing these crashes. I wonder if its their pci-express controller on the card… Even though the AE-9 isn’t supported, you should still be able to get into Linux, pass the boot up process. The card should just not work by not outputting sound.
I also just tried Manjaro with my AE-7 and same hard freeze when Manjaro tries to boot up. I went ahead and ordered a AE-5 Plus. I’m just going to use that for the time being until the AE-7 gets fixed on Linux. Funny enough, the ACM that comes with the AE-7 works with the AE-5 Plus which is nice.
If it can help, I can take my AE-7 apart and take some photos of it to compare it to those with older, release time-frame versions of the AE-7.
ok i received my new ae-5 plus and it works wonderfully well in any linux i tried so far. just like my original release day ae-5 non plus.
since i took out my ae-7, i went ahead and took it apart to take some photos of it. here they are:
comparing my ae-7 to release day ae-7’s, photos from here::
https://thepcenthusiast.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Creative-Sound-Blaster-AE-7-Sound-Card-Review-11.jpg
the biggest thing i noticed was the change from the IDT pci-express controller chip to a asmedia pci-express to pci controller chip. i wonder if this is what’s causing the AE-7 to not just not work, but prevent any linux from booting up by hard freezing during the boot up process.
from googling the asmedia model number, asm1085, this is it: https://www.asmedia.com.tw/products-list/aDcYq0BxZfuH9Nz5/2f2yq89xz7URBZqD
I knew that AE-9 does not have any linux support and upgrading to AE-9 was based on using it on windows. However, I was not expecting that hard freeze on linux. At the end of the day, I should be able to use the linux without the need of sound output.
I don’t think any of these cards really have linux support.
chances are your ae-9 is probably using the asm1085 pci-express to pci bridge controller. this is a new revision from 2022. from searching asm1085 has issues on linux. usually not this bad, but you’ll find issues with it. apparently, its not as bad as the older asm1083 bridge controller on linux…
older ae-7’s used a IDT bridge controller chip which worked fine with linux. and there is a difference with the release date ae-7’s and current revision ae-7’s. they changed a lot of stuff on the card.
Indeed you are right. So do you guys think that this will ever be fixed on the kernel? At least to enable people like me to be able to carry on using linux on a dual boot system. This may seem a noob question but is there any linux kernel developer that we can raise this problem?
i really don’t know if it will get fixed anytime soon. it comes down to people more knowledge than us with interest in the AE-7 to poke and probe to see what’s going on with the asm1085 and the ae-7 to get it working. or maybe hell will freeze over and creative themselves will contribute. i would love to help more but i don’t even get any errors. just a hard lock. can’t report much back other than it.
the one bug report posted by hyrules earlier in this thread, https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217510 doesn’t inspire any confidence.
for time being, at least my new ae-5 plus works like a happy clam in both linux and windows 11.
From the feedback in the bug report the dev does not even reply to the thread so it basically gives the amount of interest this bug is attracting. I don’t believe the dev will fix it any time soon. Someone posted a temporary fix by disabling the card itself in linux using the snd_hda_intel.enable=Y,N,Y blacklist function in which you specifically disable the card. The Y,N,Y really depends on the card order on your board so it’s a trial and error thing if I remember well. If you have an onboard card that could alleviate the issue and allow you to dual boot but the card still does not work even if you try to boot 50 times. I was never able to boot any distro with it in the computer except by blacklisting. Thing I would suggest is the more people reply to the bug report the more pressure it will put on the dev to fix this. If you have not already done so I would recommend you reply to the thread. Nobody can reply anything more than hard lock because it just hard lock without any other error and god knows how much I tried to make it spew more meaningful errors.