Usb or Optical

I would invest in a JCAT USB card ($495), though it’s probably more than you want to spend. Alternative, the Matrix Element H USB card ($329) or the SOTM tX-USBexp USB 3.0 card ($350) might be options. That being said, it’s hard to say whether the motherboard USB output would be better or worse than the motherboard optical output. You would just have to test to see.

If you are using an AMD processor, then look into a Pink Faun S/PDIF card ($360). That will likely be better than a USB card, since you are not looking for DSD.

This entire post needs some background info, First of all, all things equal, and for good technical reasons, USB > SPDIF and within SPDIF Electrical > Optical. So an SPDIF card would be pretty much the last choice.

So USB has the most potential, mostyl because it is aysnchronous and allows the DAC to reclock everything. The DAC likely has a better clock than the transport, and there is no long cable to mess it up, so less jitter.

Now, if you are using the solution with the best potential, which is USB, you have the further option of isolating either the sending side or the receiving side. Either works. I dont know enough about he internal design of either to be sure how well isolated one of the other is. Assume the sending device is poorly isolated - all PCs, Macs and laptops are poorly isolated (unless you buy one with a custom card, like an Allo streamer).

Optical (toslink, SPDIF) has one advantage: in a high EMI environment it is immune. That’s why its on TVs.

That said, one of this first posts hit the nail onthe head:  with the equipment you describe the differences are likely academic.

to one post above, with the exception of some recent upgrades to the standard that essentially no one implements, optical SPDIF is alwasy limited to 16/44 or 16/48. Its part of the limitation (along with more jitter, lots more).

So an SPDIF card would be pretty much the last choice.

I don’t actually completely agree with this.

You may not agree, but your reply indicate you don't understand the reasoning (despite the fact that i laid it out).  USB is asynchronous. It simply reads bits into abuffer and is then reclocekd with a high quality clock.  If you don't have a high quality clock, you dont have a HQ DAC.

SPDIF, including Toslink, demands that the source clock and the sink derive timing.  Not good and the source clock is likely quite poor anyway

People love re-clockers. Yet a USB interface IS a reclocker. It must be.

I had no idea i could by another card and put in my computer and run the usb out of that for optimal sound, how much better will it sound with this usb card ? im guessing not $400 worth.

I searched to see what this magic card does. Not reading the entire thread But a quick scan tells tme this: there’s alot of misinformation above. Yes, USB out of any computer can be noisy. You need to isolate it. That’’s not $400. There are statements that Windows resamples and modifies the bits. Not necessarily. You need to set volume to 100% and leave it there and use the USB high res profile (driver). On MAc’s there’s a $10 app called bit perfect that is worth every lira.

I would honestly suggest that you buy some books on digital audio and learn about it before you start throwing money around. I think Hans Beekhausen ????? (impossible to spell) does a surprisingly good job in his e-book. Learn the basics. USB can carry noise int he signal and the ground. Isolate it. USB needs a good clock int he DAC - whatever jitter free signal you think you feed it is lost in the buffer. The best way is to have a source --> ethernet --> a bridge --> USB --> isolation --> DAC.

Oh, and I'll re-iterate what i said earlier - given the equipment oyu have, plug it in, make sure your source spits out bitperfect data (lots of messing around in windows, yea!), and enjoy.

Over and out