[pr0xZen]

My concern is if it will be usb 3.0 friendly. Can you test that if your box has a 3.0 USB port please?

Update: it seems the optical output of that sound card dont support 5.1 channel, does this mean you can't get 5.1 audio in your receiver/sound bar?, like I have movies with 5.1 audio that I want to enjoy.

TIA

Just plugged into into the USB 3.0 port, works fine here. Note that this is under win8.1pro, your milage may vary.

The analog outputs does of course support 5.1 - optical or coaxial spidf connection doesn't "per say" support 5.1 audio. What they usually mean with this, is that you can't have 6 discrete, separat PCM channels thorough spdif. The solution to this is AC3 (Dolby Digital) 5.1 or DTS 5.1 . These are compressed and encoded multichannel (5.1) audio formats that have a small enough bitrate to go through optical/coaxial spdif. But due to this compression and encoding, the unit in the receiving end has to be able to decode AC3 and/or DTS. Please confirm this with the soundbar you have / are going to buy.

Another note is, that while it might give better "virtual surround" with some good quality soundbars - Sourround sound is designed to "surround you". Audio for one channel is designed to come out from a speaker at a specific location in your room - like on your side or behind you. Please understand, that with all the sound coming from the front - your "surround experience" will be limited. It might appear better than simple stereo with 2 speakers, but it will never come close to actually having a 5(+).1 surround system. But then again, a soundbar doesn't cause speaker wires and speakers "all over the room".

I saw that question on the Amazon site - but note that one of the answers does mention Dolby etc. As I've said previously - I cannot guarantee that this unit is the same as I have, although appearing to be. If they are, I know for a fact it will do both 5.1 analog and AC3/DTS bitstream passthrough - as this is what I've been using it for the last 2 months.

The DAC in a USB-->SPDIF device shouldn't matter if you are bitstreaming. The signal is simply passed through.
DAC = Digital Analogue Convertor
If you are keeping it as digital there is by definition no analogue conversion. Simple. The only DAC you care about is in your AVR.

While for bitstream passthrough the DAC isn't important - you might want to get a unit with decent DACs in case you'll actually USE the analog outputs. If your AVR only takes SPDIF connection(s), then analog connection and software decoding is your only go for HD audio.
And disregarding this - while the DACs might not even see use - the controller here is important. When it comes to cheap USB soundcards, there are few of them with controllers that actually do bitstream passthrough, and fewer still with overall decent driver support etc. The C-media CM106 seems to be an exception to this rule, and is the same controller as in some of the Turle Beach Audio Advantage sets, that either A; starts at minimum 2x price, or B: were discontinued long time ago.