You're configuring how the WASAPI software mixer is going to sample audio at. This doesn't really affect how the sound is going to go to the actual card. If this was KMixer it'd be a different story...

Though that seems odd the 32-bit mixing option is listed. Creative's drivers never list that. Are you using the stock Windows Audio Foundation driver that gets installed by default?

DracoNihil wrote:

You're configuring how the WASAPI software mixer is going to sample audio at. This doesn't really affect how the sound is going to go to the actual card. If this was KMixer it'd be a different story...

Though that seems odd the 32-bit mixing option is listed. Creative's drivers never list that. Are you using the stock Windows Audio Foundation driver that gets installed by default?

This appears using stock Windows drivers, the latest official Creative drivers for Windows 8/8.1, and the latest Daniel_K drivers - and only on my Windows 8.1 computer. My Windows 7 system never showed 32-bit mixing support before with any of the aforementioned drivers (except Daniel_K's since I didn't find out about those until literally yesterday).

I'm going to take a guess that somewhere along the line 8/8.1/10 magically added 32-bit mixing support to WASAPI... Other than that I've no idea why it's showing that.

Still, those playback rates control the software mixer. Whatever's going to the soundcard is handled in driver space, a sanely written driver wont try to send what the card does not understand and will convert when necessary. And with Creative cards (EMU10kx\EMU20kx) the hardware mixer usually does the conversion there rather than in software, as far as I know.

Not sure how it all works (or if it matters) but I think 32-bit is floating point, and 24-bit is integer PCM. I recall seeing a 32-bit option in XP already so it's not something new.

Anyway, if it sounds good, then yes, it's safe. Your sound card won't go up in flames or anything.

It also won't sound any better. 😀

Also this thread is in the wrong forum as it is not about a Windows game.

I think all audio is converted to 32-bit for the software mixer anyway. 32-bit audio output would then likely be without converting down again. I don't know if this has any data loss at all, but many prefer native 16-bit output just to be sure, which is only possible with special media players.