In case you change your mind, here’s the Arch Wiki for Pulseaudio. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PulseAudio
And Pipewire: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire
And Wireplumber: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/WirePlumber
Just so you know, there are people who use Pulseaudio for music production. It’s not actually outdated, just not as versatile as Pipewire.
After specifying the supported sample rates on both ends as well as disabling suspend, it’s gotten better. But i cannot get rid of the hum.
As a “sanity check” (i guess?) i moved my pc to my living room for a moment and sure enough, when connecting my mobo to my cheap lg bluray player/amp (also 5.1ch) i still get the hum, so it seems SNR isn’t as good as advertised on my particular motherboard.
Marketing bullshit or a defective unit, I do not know.
Now the question becomes instead: what’s an affordable solution?
My options boils down to the following:
Either way I would need coax and/or toslink output.
(DTS support required for 5.1ch it seems on toslink, not sure about coax)