The root problem: for some reason, on boot, Ubuntu 14.04 disables (mutes) the S/PDIF output on my sound card. 

[This question and its answers](https://askubuntu.com/questions/50067/howto-save-alsamixer-settings) indicate that `sudo alsactl store` will store the alsamixer settings once I've unmuted the S/PDIF output, but on boot, the S/PDIF output is muted again. 

In `/var/lib/alsa/asound.state` ([pastebin](http://pastebin.com/E4h3ECta)) there is one PDIF entry, which I've set to "true" and saved; this has resulted in solving auto-mute for my "Phantom Jack" but there's no other entry for the "true" S/PDIF in asound.state that I can manually adjust. 

There's also an empty `/var/lib/alsa/asound.state.lock` file (11 bytes, blank in gedit) in the `/alsa/` directory. Is this something I should be dealing with?