[Mattimis]

Hi, I was wondering the best method for setting up a dac. A good amount of my music comes from my computer but my motherboard only has optical and usb no coaxial, and the DAC I use only supports (48kHz, 16bit) but supports (44.1kHz-96kHz, 16bit-24bit) through Coax/optical which im going to guess will be a noticeable difference. 
 
So now im at the conclusion of using optical or Coaxial and I hear Coax is better (or they are the same) there is allot of dead horse beating on the internet, but I never hear Coax being worse.
My question is would it be worth picking up a sound card that has a Coax out or am I better off just using optical, and if I get a sound card does it really matter the quality the card, or should I just get the cheapest card I can find with Coax (shouldnt it just be sending data directly from the motherboard to the DAC anyways?)
 
Thanks all
 
http://www.headfonia.com/affordable-digital-to-analog-conversion-topping-d2-and-d20/2/
Thats the DAC im using

 

[Mattimis]

Im thinking of getting a bit perfect card with drivers for the Coax and then going from that strait to my DAC, this should complete remove the computer from messing with the sound and send a pure stream via Coax

 

[barleyguy]

I'd just use the optical port on your motherboard.  In my opinion, optical is better than coax when using a computer because it electrically isolated, and sometimes computers are electrically noisy.  For that reason, optical will often have a quieter background than coax.  It also depends on the design of the DAC though, because if the DAC has enough "galvanic isolation", it will be electrically isolated even over coax.  But using optical guarantees it.
 
The other thing is, that motherboard sound cards have near 100% support by applications, whereas an add-in card may have certain apps that it won't work with.  It depends on the card and the drivers, and is most commonly a problem with games.
 
In short, IMO there are more pros than cons to using the optical port that is already on your motherboard.  Then you can spend the money that would have gone to a card on a better DAC.  (Well, a more expensive DAC.  There is not necessarily any correlation between price and performance with DACs.)
 
$.02