Hey Axeman
thanks for the reply. I have the 2496. It does sound pretty good, but its time for me to make absolute broadcast quality stuff, so i can't risk a potentially weak link in the chain. And as you verified, the card will play a less significant role with the RME. Thanks for the reply.
Remember that the main aim of S/PDIF is to keep the stream running.
Therefore it will not care about errors.
It's a digital interface, sure, but it's not like a computer-to-computer or an IDE interface where there is parity checking and handshaking, error correction, etc.
So what you get at the receiving end may not be a bit-for-bit copy of what was sent.