I have an RME Digi96/8 PAD, which gives me the option of various buffer sizes.

What difference does different buffer size make, both technically and sound wise?

For playback of music, no difference. Lower sample size may make your sound stutter a bit if you're using ASIO.

For recording it lowers the minimum latency, which is useful if you're doing effects processing, but more or less useless otherwise.

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Good and great! No difference within 64 sample or 512 sample (latency) for playback music?

What's the maximum buffer RME cards allow in ASIO?

Buffer size doesn't affect sound quality per se, but inadequate buffer will cause skips and dropouts, especially when upsampling is used.

For example, my Lynx card will only allow maximum ASIO buffer size of 1024, which is fine for most applications. Almost no skips whatsoever, even with 88.4 or 96kHz upsampling in Foobar. However, when I use 176.4 or 192kHz upsampling, the skips become often enough to be annoying. God, how much I would give to get 2048 buffer size! I know some cards can get 2048..

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I have an Audiotrack prodigy 7.1 and I can set up to 2048 sample.

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lower the priority of the foobar a bit, that will fix your problem, not excessive buffer size..

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I already tried that and other setting adjustments. If I don't lower the thread priority, I get too many dropouts to listen to music. Even with thread priority lowered, buffer maxed, 176.4kHz resampling really could use more buffer than 1024, at least for my Lynx card.