iMac Late 2013 Audio Cirrus Logic CS4206 Issues

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

2 Answers

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:

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).

• 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)