SPDIF optical out roundup

[Shalmaneser]

Are there enough MOBOs offering S/PDIF optical out ports to justify a roundup or other overview? Perhaps capturing a wild audiophile and getting some observations and opinions for extracting the best in audio from the latest in computing hardware would be helpful as this is a crossover technology (computing <-> audiophile). I have a home theater and am rebuilding my computer system and am investigating this new feature in MOBOs.

 

[getochkn]

No, it's digital. Any difference in sound is going to come from the way the amp/receiver decodes the signal according to proper specs and amplifies it properly. It simply passes the audio signal in a digital format, thus no converting, no DAC's, no amplification, and no difference.

 

[Shalmaneser]

No, it's digital. Any difference in sound is going to come from the way the amp/receiver decodes the signal according to proper specs and amplifies it properly. It simply passes the audio signal in a digital format, thus no converting, no DAC's, no amplification, and no difference.

What about internals on the motherboards? Any variables there? In Vista Microsoft dropped it's Windows K-mixer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_legacy_audio_components )because of problems.