Digital-out Delay?

Hello,

I'm curious about optical digital-out and the delay associated with periods of no audio. I have a Mac Pro and have it optically connected to a sound bar. If no sound is transmitted for a few seconds, the moment a sound is transmitted, the first second or so of the sound/song or whatever is completely cut out.

If I play something in the background very low, just enough to transmit audio data, this delay doesn't occur. This also doesn't happen on bootcamp leading me to submit this here.

Seems like this is something inherent in the way optical digital transfer works, though is there a way to have osx transmit "silence" in that data is continuous and uninterrupted when something does need to play? If I'm connected optically, i barely catch the end of system sounds if at all. (Finder sounds are set to output digital out in my MIDI setup)

Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated,

sputnikv