[LAU] How clean is direct digital out

[Mark Constable]

I have this onboard audio "card" and snd-rate shows it does
44100-192000 on playback (perhaps capture as well)...

 nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1)

My question is if I playback a 44.1 khtz CD track out through
the S/PDIF on the motherboard will it be modified in any way
or would the values from a CD, mp3 or wav pretty well go
directly out the S/PDIF ?

The reason I ask is that the analog audio output is medicore
(but better than previous onboard audio I have had access to)
but perhaps the optical S/PDIF out would be as good quality
as any high end card (seeing the MCP67 handles 44100 natively) ?

--markc