Hardware: Gigabyte GA-A75m-d2 mobo using integrated graphics and soundcard which should be capable of passing 7.1 audio.

Basically, I'm just looking for a way to enable passthrough audio for Kodi or Plex Home Theater in Ubuntu 14.04. I want to pass lossless audio to my AVR for decoding - I don't need my HTPC to decode anything.

None of the tutorials or walk-thrus I've found have worked and I'm about to completely give up on Ubuntu and Linux in general out of frustration. I've tried a little over a dozen so far and am on my 6th fresh Ubuntu install.