Deicated sound card for PC listening?

[abt]

I had a Mackie onyx mixer with a firewire card that I used as my interface. After a while I upgraded that to a Digi 003 rig. At the time I left the mackie fw card in the box and was using it to playback any pc sounds, iTune, CDs, etc. It's was more just laziness than a conscious decision.

Now the Mackie is on ebay, it seem ridiculous to keep a mixer that I never used just so I could have a sound card.

I have a new PC that I wanted to keep as simple as possible so I didn't put in a sound card. Instead I thought I'd just the Pro Tools rig for Windows playback. I thought it was a good idea at the time now I think a dedicated sound card would be much easier.

Are you using a sound card for windows playback, itunes, cds etc or are you using you interface?

Any recommendation for a sound card?

 

[jipchen]

I don't really see a reason not to use the interface for normal audio playback. At least I did when I had a PC. Now I just use the MacBook Pro and its internal soundcard with either headphones or my HiFi-system.. mostly because the interface is in the controlroom

 

[abt]

Just for convenience really, PT can be a bit of a pain for straight up windows playback.