Noted, the VST's I have tested are all good, no added latency it seems but it does add to CPU usage (about 0.3%).
On a side note, If I purchased a £300 sound card, I bet £20 is SPDIF, the rest analogue.
Why is something so out of date so expensive to get right?
Most consumer products these days are fully digital, including TV and radio, only soundcards use analogue.
I also don't think there are any-many high end AVR's with 6 channel analogue direct input.
The only upgrade from the digital age I would guess is the optical age. Digital management.
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If I compared a two different DMAS's, both badged 'True Sound 1:1', the difference between the two will be 0%.
The only time I would hear change, is if I changed the speakers, which have P-DAC's.
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Also note, most OEM's are ignoring the current consumer and professional standard Sony-Philips Digital Interface Format (SPDIF).
You can read more in my DMAS link, its still built as if it where legacy SPDIF (1983), 2 channel, not current standard.
SPDIF uses IEC 60958-3, which still gets updates, transmitters are programmable (speaker config, other).
Direct CPU to SPDIF bridge, no HDA would be interesting.
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Second image below, I created a bi-directional optical system for HDMI-DP. Single specific lanes of single fiber, a multi-fiber cable.
The video lane could start at 100 Gbps (NRZ-PAM2), and later move to 200Gbps (other encoding, example PAM4).
The audio and data lane can-will also have their
own bandwidth, 125Mbps audio 10Gbps data.
This would require a new version, due to the built in optical transmitters-receivers (not in the cable or connector).
Blanking periods for audio-other are
not required (data island period).
