[ubuntu] 5.1 sound gone after partial upgrade

Hi all
hope I can fin some helpafter reading abot this everywhere.
I had surround sound working very well on my xonar d2x up until about a week ago when a partial upgrade messed up everythinh (I suspect vlc mainly responsible).

However I was able to recreate the 5.1 digital profile but when I try to select it it shifts back automatically to stereo and sometimes analog.....although sound works but not as before of course)

I did everything I could in this thread but no luck
This is my asound.conf:

pcm.a52 {
@args [CARD]
@args.CARD {
type string
}
type rate
slave {
pcm {
type a52
bitrate 448
channels 6
card $CARD
}
rate 48000 #required somehow, otherwise nothing happens in PulseAudio
}
}

sudo apt-get build-dep libasound2-plugins
gives me this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Picking 'alsa-plugins' as source package instead of 'libasound2-plugins'
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 6 not upgraded

aplay -D a52:0
nothing happens only cursor blinking

Thev system sees the card

Only thing didnt try is editing daemon.conf and change default channels from 2 to 6.....would that work? (diddnt need to do that before)

any ideas?