Is digital optical audio worth it?

A high-end glass optical Toslink cable and DAC is well worth it if you have the matched quality build high-end audio equipment to pair with it.

In your case, inserting one into a mass produced cheap build sound bar and PC would be an outlay with a minimal to highly likely nil upgrade in audio performance. Ditto for upgrading your PC sound card.

How does it sound now?

If it has a gourd loop hum, then optical is a sensible option... but it will not likely change between optical, USB etc unless there is a glaring problem.

Any digital out to a decent DAC is better than computer sound .

That said I have an Asus stereo card with optical out, M2Tech USB to SPDIF coax and USB through an iFI Silencer. All go to the same Multibit DAC and the toslink is by far the worst sounding. A bigger difference than any cables I have tried. And all are worse than a $100 Raspberry Pi.

For a simple sound-bar, it does not really matter.

kr4  

You got that right.

I'm using a Samsung HW-F355 sound bar for my computer audio.

Right now it is plugged in through a regular aux cord. I noticed it has a digital optical audio input jack. I'm using my computer's motherboard's default audio output, which doesn't have optical.

Would it be worth it to buy a sound card for my computer to connect it to the sound bar via digital optical audio?  https://19216811.cam/

I'm not really an audiophile so it doesn't matter much, but if there would be any noticeable improvement I would do it just as a computer upgrade.

issue got solvedd