From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.2.1) Gecko/20010901 Description of problem: Just updated my mobo to an nForce based one (ASUS A7N266-e). Kudzu detected the on board sound as i810 (wrong?) Sound comes out but is badly distorted. When sound is quiet, you hear quiet squeals in the background. When playing sound it is tinny and distorted with a background hiss that seems to go up and down in volume along with the sound being played. NO clicking or skips though...sounds as if it might not be using all the bits of the codec or badly resampling the data. kernel messages are: Feb 12 19:47:36 alien kernel: Intel 810 + AC97 Audio, version 0.19, 13:48:53 Jan 17 2002 Feb 12 19:47:36 alien kernel: PCI: Enabling device 00:06.0 (0005 -> 0007) Feb 12 19:47:36 alien kernel: PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:06.0 to 64 Feb 12 19:47:36 alien kernel: i810: NVIDIA nForce Audio found at IO 0xe000 and 0xe100, IRQ 5 Feb 12 19:47:37 alien kernel: i810_audio: Audio Controller supports 6 channels. Feb 12 19:47:37 alien kernel: ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: 0x8384:0x7609 (SigmaTel STAC9721/23) Feb 12 19:47:37 alien kernel: i810_audio: only 48Khz playback available. Feb 12 19:47:37 alien kernel: i810_audio: AC'97 codec 0 supports AMAP, total channels = 2 Feb 12 19:47:37 alien kernel: ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: 0x8384:0x7608 (SigmaTel STAC9708) Feb 12 19:47:38 alien modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-0-0 Feb 12 19:47:38 alien modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-1 Feb 12 19:47:38 alien modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-1-0 Feb 12 19:47:38 alien modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-1 Feb 12 19:47:38 alien modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-1-0 Feb 12 19:47:44 alien kernel: i810_audio: timed out waiting for codec 1 analog readyhdc: ATAPI 56X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache I'm told the chip can be used as an AC97 codec with i810 drivers but also has other more advanced features. I'm running the latest Athlon kernel from RHN 2.4.9-21 Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.1. install RH7.2, custom, everything checked 2. update to latest kernel via RHN 3. Sound quality is bad (tinny with background white noise) may not be obvious if you just give it a quick listen or have bad speakers. Sound doesn't skip, just doesn't sound good. 2. 3. Actual Results: Sound quality poor Expected Results: Sound quality should be very good, windows users report exceptionally good quality sound when playing back MP3 or game music so I assume the problem is linux driver related. Additional info: This board/chipset is looking to be very popular as performs very well and is cheap for what you get. It should really be supported.
Depending on how you are playing the sound (which you did not describe), this might actually be an esound issue. Try grabbing the esound from RHL 7.3 and seeing if the fixes in that help.
NVIDIA has drivers on their site somewhere www.nvidia.com for the nforce and linux. These drivers contain the nforce sound driver, which is a hacked i810 driver. Try those drivers if you haven't already.
current errata kernels have support for this hw