I think some people might have misunderstood Diego’s post about ALSA support in Gentoo.

To clarify, we (as in Gentoo kernel maintainers) do support in-kernel ALSA drivers, but Diego (who maintains the out-of-kernel alsa-driver package) does not. I recommend using the in-kernel drivers, Diego recommends using the out-of-kernel drivers.

If you do have problems with the in-kernel version, please do file bugs, but make sure they get assigned to kernel@gentoo.org rather than Diego.