Best sound card for audio processing in Audition

[Shabadood]

I edit podcasts on a pretty powerful PC built primarily for video editing (Intel Xeon Gold 5218 CPU @ 2.30GHz 2.29 GHz 2 processors + 96 GB RAM).

But I've noticed that when my projects hit about 18-20 tracks with multiple effects in the FX rack my playback starts glitching out, crackling and stuttering. I think this is because of the pretty basic sound processing - via Realtek High Definition Audio.

There is also an AJA Kona device attached. But after contacting AJA support, I've discovered the Kona device can't do the audio processing. It just receives an input from the Realtek device and passes it through for monitoring.

So my question is - What sound card would be best to beef up the audio processing?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Depends upon your budget, really. But I have to say that when you get glitches and stuttering, it's more often to do with the throughput from your HD than anything to do with your sound device - Audition is essentially streaming from it. The other thing which can make a huge difference to the number of tracks you can stream at once, especially if there are a lot of effects on them, is whether you have pre-rendered the effects on the track first (that's the little lightning bolt icon in the track controls). Most people find that pre-rendering makes a huge difference to the streaming performance.

All that notwithstanding, getting a better sound device would be a good idea anyway - the built-in realtek devices are, shall we say, less than stellar performers...

[Shabadood]

Thanks @SteveG_AudioMasters_ . Any suggestions for a card that will take some of the processing load off the CPU?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

There are certainly a few around, but whether Audition can make use of them is another matter altogether, and I'm not aware of any that do. The situation with video processing (where this is quite common) is different and altogether more developed.