[draterrojam]

Have a Creative sound card and a usb dac with an optical input (audioengine d1). Would I get better sound quality from using the optical output from the soundcard to the dac or would it be the same from over usb? I know there is less noise with optical and higher quality. 
I'm still very new to this whole thing so if I sound as dumb as I think I do then I apologize  

 

[ROBSCIX]

Do some experiments and decide for yourself.

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

Have a Creative sound card and a usb dac with an optical input (audioengine d1). Would I get better sound quality from using the optical output from the sound card to the DAC or would it be the same from over usb? I know there is less noise with optical and higher quality. 
I'm still very new to this whole thing so if I sound as dumb as I think I do then I apologize  

Do you know which model Creative sound card it is?
You could not hook up the USB connection to the sound card anyway, only to the motherboard's USB port, which would bypass the Creative sound card.
The optical connection would need to go from the sound card's optical output, to the AudioEngine's optical input, to still be able to use the creative sound card's audio features.
If you hooked the motherboard's optical connection to the AudioEngine's optical input, you would also bypass the Creative sound card.

 

[tme110]

it really does depend heavily on what the 2 components are.  Optical recievers and transmitters are different.  USB varies more than anything.  I haven't like any usb DACs until very recently.  And you may not hear the difference anyway...