iMac Late 2013 Audio Cirrus Logic CS4206 Issues

Question

I have just switched from OSX to Xubuntu 14.04 on my iMac Late 2013. I've got everything running smooth, except for my freakin' audio card. It works occasionally for a few minutes and then it just stops. I can't hear anything, but the sound indicator in the sound settings is moving.

I followed every single possible solution on askubuntu and the Ubuntu forums but I couldn't get it to work permanently. The only thing that kinda works for me is force reloading the pulse audio driver. But I gotta do that a couple of times, including logins and log outs to reactive the sound for a few minutes.

I really don't want to give up, and hope you guys can help me figure this one out. I don't want to go back to OSX, I really like my new found freedom!

Let me know if you need more information, any help would be greatly appreciated!

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: CS4206 Analog [CS4206 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: CS4206 Digital [CS4206 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Card: HDA Intel PCH                                 
Chip: Cirrus Logic CS4206

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 13 '14 at 04:43

I had many issues with my late 2013 iMac 21.5" as well. The setup which currently works for me is the following:

Pulseaudio and alsa default settings
in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, make sure you have the following option

options snd-hda-intel model=imac27_122

Then, speakers should work out of the box. To fix headphones, I had to use hda_analyzer.py, instructions are here. I actually had to modify the source a bit to run on my machine, let me know if you need further help with that.

Using hda_analyzer, make sure that you configure card-1 codec-0 as following: enter image description here

Sound should then work with both speakers and headphones. The [2] IO is your headphone, the [3] is the speaker. To make the changes permanent, use exp to save the changes to a script and call it in the boot process (e.g. in rc.local).

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:25

You can try uninstalling Pulseaudio and test with the Alsa audio layer only:
```
sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install  gnome-alsamixer
```
Reboot and set the volume with the Gnome Alsa mixer (in the multimedia menu), or alsamixer in a terminal: it could be better as Pulseaudio is cpu consuming and not necessary for audio to work.
If you want to go back to Pulseaudio, look here :
Audio suddenly stopped, pulseaudio reinstall has not helped? (14.04)

iMac Late 2013 Audio Cirrus Logic CS4206 Issues

2 Answers2