Usb or Optical

Let me correct that last statement.  Its showing 24/192 no matter whats playing on the dac screen, so if im playing a 24/96 the screen says 24/192 always, thats strange .  When i click on the song on amazon hd it now says device able to play 192, so at least im getting hi res.

The Windows 7 and Windows 10 sound device system pretty much takes over any audio from an application.  I don't like the way they did this because it over-rides and re-samples/converts the original music data to whatever you set as "default" in the sound control panel.

The Amazon Music app for the PC may not be written to bypass these Windows control panel "Default Format" settings.  Many apps just send the sound file to the internal Windows WMD driver and just let Windows take over and handle the interface with the hardware.  JRiver is one of the few media players that is able to bypass Windows and actually send the music data in original sampling rate (but it mostly only plays files).

Auxinput one of the few who get it that usb or optical directly off motherboards not optimal. If there is one thing I'd like to get across to people it would be this. I find it inexcusable so many servers don't have optimized usb built in. Benjamin at Mojo Audio  was one the few  who understood this with his Deja Vu server, too bad not available any more.

Optical in same boat, only the Small Green Computer Sonicorbiter I9 addresses this.

Expect to spend more money and have more complex setup with most servers since they don't address above issue. One should ask themselves why all these usb renderers, decrapifiers, streamers exist? Because they're doing the job server should be doing.

I'm also curious about these rare dacs with optical input, interesting you prefer usb, at least so far. Is this due to your entire chain or quality of usb vs optical input on dac? I'd bet on usb input being superior as technology has been around much longer and reclockiing etc. SOP these days.

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.

I do appreciate all of the input I just spent $400 on a brand new DAC I'm not dumping another $400 into a USB card to go into my computer that's not going to happen.  I'm running at USB right n. I don't understand why I need another special card just to run sound out of my computer into a DAC anyways I appreciate everybody's input and it probably would make a difference but I'm not spending $400 on a card.