Are XMOS drivers needed for a DAC used only for gaming and streaming content?

[viivo]

DAC: Sabaj D5

One of the differences I see with the XMOS drivers installed is I can select 16 and 24-bit depths as opposed to only 32-bit with the default Windows USB driver.

Are XMOS drivers only for those using an audio interface and/or playing back lossless?

 

[dunring]

They're for Windows support to use all the modes possible, and ASIO support if you need it. Wasapi push is better if you do EQ or other processing, and pull/event is lower latency like if you play an instrument hooked into an interface live. You can disable the taskbar monitor program that installs and just keep the driver for Windows to use if you don't use ASIO. Games don't use it at all, they go through Windows directly. You can use ASIO for playback, but if the driver has a problem, you'll get things like a timeout error. It's great for DSD files to make setup easy on those though. I have a couple of DSF files I use to test things, but in a blind test I doubt I could tell the difference.