Will and pro audio sound card have issues with games?

[Widjaja]

I'm planning on replacing my Audigy 2 ZS with an Infrasonic Quartet for recording purposes.

But on the other hand I still game too.
Will installing this sound card cause compatibility issues with games?

[Widjaja]

Just thought I'd update as I guess no one would have an idea on this as many people here do not use pro audio cards or do audio recording as most of us here are gamers or just plain hardware enthusiasts.

I can say the Infrasonic Quartet does not play nice with ATi HD audio if for some unknown reason the HD audio conflicts with teh sound card in a specific PCI slot.
This caused the HD audio to disappear from the device manager and keep one of my CPU cores at a constant 50% as soon as the Latest Infrasonic drivers were installed.

Moving the sound card to another PCI slot solved the issue by half as the HD Audio was now visible in Device Manager but the CPU was still being used but now at 20-30%.
I installed the drivers which came with the card which are v1.07 and the issue disappeared.

So it seems the manufacturers of the drivers for this card can mess it up in later versions.

As for games it is actually better than the Audigy ZS.
I don't hear any pops and crackles, and the rapture audio in Dirt 2 runs fine unlike the Audigy 2 ZS.

So yes this can record well and is suitable for games as well.

[Frederik S]

Most of the recording gear is alright for games. They miss of the of the sound APIs that the more gamer oriented brands have, and as a result of that it may put more load on the CPU. In a modern PC the load added from that will be negligible.

Also driver support is an obvious issue, but other than that the pro cards are nice. The difference in sound quality between the pro audio cards and the gaming cards is huge at least the ones I have heard over the past year.

[Thatguy]

Originally Posted by Frederik S

Most of the recording gear is alright for games. They miss of the of the sound APIs that the more gamer oriented brands have, and as a result of that it may put more load on the CPU. In a modern PC the load added from that will be negligible.

Also driver support is an obvious issue, but other than that the pro cards are nice. The difference in sound quality between the pro audio cards and the gaming cards is huge at least the ones I have heard over the past year.

Can I put you to a blind listening test on that ? With equalized gain.

[Frederik S]

In a volume matched test with a decent set of speakers or headphones anytime.

[Widjaja]

Before I even literally used this card I noticed there was 0 white noise coming from the speakers.
Just a pity there is something going on with the set of drivers available at the infrasonic website which causes my CPU to run at a constant 30-40%.
This happens with all the drivers on their site.