I thought I understood this correctly, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Doesn't your audio player (fb2k, for example) convert your audio files to a digital signal, which is passed to your soundcard? And if you use the digital out on your soundcard, does it really matter what soundcard you have? It's essentially just changing the digital signal in the computer into an optical digital signal for your receiver...

Am I wrong here?

Cerebus

The soundcard does matter. Virtually all of the Creative Labs cards will resample a 44.1khz signal to 48khz, thus introducing rounding errors on the digital output.

Whether you can tell a difference is a matter of debate. But if you are doing any serious audio work with your PC, you will not want this.

For the casual listener or gamer, it probably doesn't matter.

Let's say that, under XP, I use my USB port as my audio device, and dump that through a USB to Toslink connector. Will that resample?

Not sure about that one. I would probably need to see the specs/datasheet for the device. Even then, I might not be able to tell.

Hello, Cerebrus,
This thread answers your question : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=11725