connected to 5.1 sound system via thunderbolt 3 dock or sound blaster?

[gerrard0804]

Hi, I'm gonna connect my iMac Pro to my sound amplifier via sound blaster by toslink until I find this thunderbolt 3 dock with s/pid out which is more useful to me as I don't need turn my iMac back to get to the ports.

Any difference if I connect via sound blaster and the dock please? My amplifier can decode the sound source and powerful enough to boost up the sound, so I don't another sound card to decode for me. Any advices please?

sound blaster E5: https://hk.creative.com/p/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-e53

OCW thunderbolt 3 dock: https://www.owcdigital.com/products/thunderbolt-3-dock

 

[Trebuin]

The TB will be unaltered audio whereas soundblaster (SB) has the ability to add effects to the audio. If SB costs less, go with SB.

 

[gerrard0804]

The TB will be unaltered audio whereas soundblaster (SB) has the ability to add effects to the audio. If SB costs less, go with SB.

that means SB decodes the source first, then add effect on and encode again to transfer to my AMP system?

 

[danielwsmithee]

iMacs use to support SPDIF directly through the headphone jack via an optical cable. Does the iMac Pro not support that? Heck I don’t know if the current iMac nectar does that anymore. It was a handy feature to connect to a receiver like this.

Just found this. Turns out that feature was removed in the 2017 release and iMac Pro.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204392