Arrow Lake (Intel Core Ultra 7 255H) falls back to legacy HDA — no SOF/DMIC beamforming

[nickgeoca]

On an ASUS Zephyrus G16 (2025) with Intel Core Ultra 7 255H (Arrow Lake-H), the audio subsystem falls back to the legacy snd_hda_intel driver instead of SOF. This means the built-in dual-mic array has no beamforming or DSP processing, making it largely unusable for calls.

Hardware:

• ASUS Zephyrus G16 (GA605W)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 255H (Arrow Lake-H)
• Codec: Realtek ALC285
• Two internal mic nodes (pin defaults 0x90a60140, 0x90a60150)

Kernel/OS:

• CachyOS, kernel 6.18.9-2-cachyos
• PipeWire 1.4.10
• No SOF topology files for Arrow Lake found in /lib/firmware/intel/sof-tplg/

Audio devices (no SOF loaded):

  $ cat /proc/asound/cards
   0 [PCH            ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
                        HDA Intel PCH at 0x62332c0000 irq 224
   1 [NVidia         ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
                        HDA NVidia at 0x94080000 irq 17

Expected: SOF driver loads with appropriate topology for Arrow Lake, enabling DMIC array beamforming.

Actual: Falls back to legacy HDA driver. Mic array is treated as simple stereo input with no DSP processing.

Is Arrow Lake-H SOF support planned? Are there topology files in progress for this platform?