IMO, the answer is it depends on one thing: If you are using a DAC that doesn't do 2-dimensional jitter reduction, then I recommend using the EA converter. If you use a DAC that does 2-D jitter reduction, then it doesn't matter whether you use USB (with or without the Empirical Audio converter) or AES out of the sound card.
I have a 30 meter Opticis USB cable from my PC to my rig. I also have an 80 foot AES cable, plugged into Lynx AES16, from PC to rig. And I have an EA Turbo2 that I can use to convert USB to AES, if needed.
Until recently, I used a Meitner DCC2se dac. It sounded better when I ran USB through the EA Turbo2 compared to when I ran AES from the Lynx directly into the dac. In fact, the sound with USB+Turbo2 was equal to using my Meitner CDSDse transport. So I ended up getting rid of the transport because I never used it. I believe the USB+Turbo2 sounded better because it had lower jitter than Lynx+AES.
Moving forward to present day, I now have a Playback Designs MPD-5 dac. The PD dac uses 2-D jitter reduction, so it doesn't matter what kind of digital signal you use. Whether I use Lynx+AES or USB+Turbo2 or USB directly into the dac, it always sound the same. To me this is a game changer. There is no need for expensive converters or worrying about which signal to output from your PC. My strategy was to save the money that I would have spent on an expensive converter and put it toward a better dac that doesn't need the converter.
