Should I use my new RME over my onboard sound for music/windows? Recommendations?

[crewxp]

Should I use my new RME over my ASUS onboard sound card for everyday windows usage? (Music, Games, Movies). I know it's better recording quality, but is it better audio quality than my 5.1 onboard sound?

I just purchased a new HDSPe AIO card for Cubase recording and mainly for it's ASIO performance, but I want to use my computer speakers (Z-5500) to be able to hear what I am playing through ASIO AND also hear my computer's audio as well.

Is there any way I can combine these two and use them at the same time? If I use the RME's optical out, would I still be able to keep the 5.1 Audio from Windows and Games and also be able to listen to my ASIO at the same time?

 

[c7sus]

Maybe. I used to use both a SB card and a Lynx2A at the same time. Then I ditched the SB and now use the loopback function of the Lynx.

On my XP system certain apps take total control of the Lynx so I can't have Dimension Pro or EZ Player or Sonar open and watch videos at the same time because those apps won't allow it.

But I can open a show from Archive.org first and then open Dim Pro and jam along.

So you have to try it out. The RME will have better quality than the Asus both in and out. Monitoring is easier if you have a mixer and have discrete outputs from each soundcard. You may have to set the Asus up with Windows drivers and the RME with ASIO in order to use them at the same time, unless the Asus has ASIO support too. In that case you would also have to set them to the same resolution in the ASIO panel.

 

[Mo Facta]

No, you can't combine them and use them at the same time.

Let me explain...

Your on-board sound circuit uses WDM (Windows Driver Model) drivers. These are HIGH LATENCY drivers that have a minimum of about 32ms of latency. This is because when that driver model was originally developed, Microsoft incorporated the latency to facilitate the video pre-read buffer. This is also why you can't use WDM drivers with DAW software as they require LOW LATENCY. Thus we have ASIO (Audio Stream Input Output). The upside of WDM drivers is that you CAN use multiple drivers at the same time. You can not do this with ASIO, unfortunately. The trade off is either high latency or one program at a time.

As was pointed out previously, if you are using a program that uses ASIO drivers, you can not get audio from any other source within your operating system / programs. It's just something Windows users have to learn to deal with. Although, some DAW software has a function where you can instruct it to release the driver when the program is minimized. This allows other programs to access the ASIO stream.

Albeit, there IS another way in which you can use ASIO4all to wrap the WDM drivers of both your RME (provided they have WDM support) and your on-board ASUS sound circuit for simultaneous use, but this is a dodgy solution at best.

I would just use the RME and be done with it. To answer your question, it is miles above the quality of your ASUS sound circuit. I would just set it as your default sound device. Why would you want the hassle of using two sound cards?

The other option is get a Mac. They are able to aggregate sound devices because they work on Core Audio, and it's far more robust to this sort of stuff.

Cheers