Soundcard or audio interface

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I think my Asus Xonar DX soundcard is giving me a BSOD every now and again and I probably need to free up the PCIe slot to fit a new GPU in. My onboard sound is awful - just so much noise comes through the speakers, so I'm wondering about using my Focusrite Saffire 56 as the permanent soundcard. It connects via Firewire 800 and ticks all the boxes from a performance perspective - low latency, high sample rate etc - and I don't use any surround sound.

Any reason why this wouldn't be sensible for gaming purposes?
 
Soldato
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Afraid you're not going to find Firewire from motherboards...
Even old original Firewire 400.
So you would have to tick checkbox for adding Firewire card into PCIe slot.
Which is kinda counterproductive for needing to free such slot...

What kind speakers you have?
Stereo or 5.1/surround set?
If stereo, Creative is selling B-stock Sound BlasterX G6 for very wallet friendly bang for buck £70. (+£4 shipping)

It has also good HRTF algorithm for good gaming immersion with good headphones beating stereo speakers...
Unless sound is just barely secondary/tertiary aspect in games you play. (Xonar's Dolby Headphone plain mediocre for gaming)
 
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I already have a FW card in another PCIe slot, so that's not an issue thankfully. I only use stereo speakers, which are active monitors, so I have to connect them via a mixing desk which is cheap and is adding noise to the signal flow.

If I wanted surround, presumably wireless headphones handle their own processing without a soundcard? or have I got that wrong?
 

Kei

Kei

Soldato
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I’ve been using an RME HDSPe AIO interface card for gaming for a few years now without any issues. (not specifically for gaming) I’m not sure if the focusrite can route like the RME, but I can have my default output as spdif and my asio output as analogue but also route the analogue output out of both spdif and analogue meaning I can bypass my mixing desk if I want.
 
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Cool, thanks. Will dig everything out and give it a go if I'm not going to be on a hiding to nothing.

If you're interested form a production perspective, routing options on the Saffire are pretty flexible via an app called Mix Control. You can pretty much point anything to anything, which I think it why they've decided it's a "56" device. I mean it's not a product in the RME territory but it's pretty good for mid-level stuff. Plus it has a blue light.
 
Soldato
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I have in the past tested game audio with focusrite 2i2 (gen 2) and RME Babyface Pro outputting audio signal to Genelec 8020D studio monitors and I could not really tell any difference and even with Sennheiser HD 599 tested with both audio interfaces, there was hardly any difference with ASIO drivers and DAW and VST. Use what you got if it all possible and save some money. There might be a use case scenario where one interface might shine better than another but in my case I have not found one, haha.
 
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