I confirm this behavior on an up-to-date debian sid. The problem is present since at least 1 month and led to unusable optical output with pulseaudio.
Note that if rate is set to 44100 in /etc/asound.conf, pulseaudio will not crash but will never show the 5.1 optical device in the device list. I can provide additionnal information if needed. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]

