Xonar DGX on Ubuntu 18.04

When switching from Windows to Ubuntu 18.04, my sound card (Asus Xonar DGX) didn’t seem to work anymore.

After searching around a little bit I found a really easy fix:

1. In Settings/Sound, select Xonar DGX as the default output using the “Analog Surround 5.1 Output” profile
2. Launch alsamixer in a terminal, select the right sound card (F6), go to “Analog Output” (arrow right) and select “Multichannel” (arrow up)

Now surround is working using the Xonar DGX sound card. However, even 2 channel audio was being played over all 5 speakers now. To prevent “upmixing” from 2 channel audio to 5 channel audio, you can disable it:

1. Edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
2. Find (or add) the enable-remixing setting and set it to no
3. Restart your PC

Sources

• Asus Xonar DGX recognized but no sound
• How to deactivate 5.1 upmix for stereo sources