optical expansion question

[guitfnky]

so I’ve been using a MOTU 8Pre (firewire) for almost 10 years as an audio interface. it also has optical/lighpipe connectivity.

it’s obviously rather long in the tooth. I’ve been experiencing some weirdness over the last year or so, which I think is caused by the outdated interface and drivers. includes the interface not playing nice with Windows after closing out of a session in the DAW/requiring the system troubleshooting to be run to repair, and strange audio dropouts (PC is a couple of years old, but still is a fairly beefy i7).

the question is...if I opt for a smaller interface which accepts optical input, and use the 8Pre only as an optical expander, would I likely experience the same weirdness? or do the lightpipe inputs function more like a direct data passthrough?