Hi David, Raymond, thanks for your follow up. Here is more pertinent information:

Changing from "Multichannel output" to "Multichannel input" on the Output tab in gnome sound settings makes the UA-101 output device disappear completely and permenantly and it does not appear in the Input tab. The only way to restore it is remove pulse files from home directory or use pavucontrol.

Checking pavucontrol in this instance shows that the profile for the card has actually been set to "Off" rather than "Multichannel Input". 

Changing the profile in pavucontrol for the UA-101 to "Multichannel Output" shows a 10 channel output device, set up with 10 channel output device (with 8x 7.1 surround channels and 2 auxs) in the Output Devices tab of pavucontrol and a 10 channel input device called "Monitor of EDIROL UA-101 Multichannel" set up with the same channel names as the outputs in the Input Devices tab.

Changing the configuration profile to "Multichannel Input" and the UA-101 device disappears completely and there are no devices representing the UA-101 in either the Output or Input tabs of pavucontrol.

Using Jack2 and QJackCtl works, creating 12 inputs and 10 outputs. QJackCtl log is as follows:

6:11:26.234 Patchbay deactivated.
16:11:26.236 Statistics reset.
16:11:26.239 ALSA connection change.
16:11:26.244 D-BUS: Service is available (org.jackaudio.service aka jackdbus).
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
16:11:49.545 D-BUS: JACK server is starting...
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
16:11:49.550 D-BUS: JACK server was started (org.jackaudio.service aka jackdbus).
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: Starting jack server...
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: JACK server starting in non-realtime mode
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: ERROR: Cannot lock down 82274202 byte memory area (Cannot allocate memory)
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: Acquired audio card Audio2
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: creating alsa driver ... hw:UA101|hw:UA101|1024|2|96000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: configuring for 96000Hz, period = 1024 frames (10.7 ms), buffer = 2 periods
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 32bit integer little-endian
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: ALSA: use 2 periods for capture
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 32bit integer little-endian
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: ALSA: use 2 periods for playback
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_1'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: New client 'system' with PID 0
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_2'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_3'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_4'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_5'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_6'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_7'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_8'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_9'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_10'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_11'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:capture_12'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_1'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_2'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_3'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_4'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_5'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_6'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_7'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_8'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_9'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:49 2014: graph reorder: new port 'system:playback_10'
Wed Sep 10 16:11:50 2014: Saving settings to "/home/joe/.config/jack/conf.xml" ...
16:11:51.579 JACK connection change.
16:11:51.585 Server configuration saved to "/home/joe/.jackdrc".
16:11:51.586 Statistics reset.
16:11:51.592 Client activated.
16:11:51.605 JACK connection graph change.
Cannot lock down 82274202 byte memory area (Cannot allocate memory)
Wed Sep 10 16:11:51 2014: New client 'qjackctl' with PID 18904

Strangely, Jack recognises 12 input channels wheres pulseaudio/pavucontrol only recognises 10.

Looking at the circuit diagram on the top of the UA-101 shows that it has 10 inputs (two of which are optical inputs) and 10 outputs (two of which are optical outputs) as well as 2 monitor output channels - this determines that there are in reality 10 inputs and 12 outputs....... :/ confused :S

The circuit diagram can be seen here: http://media.soundonsound.com/sos/may05/images/edirol3diagram.l.jpg