Peripheral Conflicting Audio With Games?

[Brotuulaan]

I use my computer for many things, the two most demanding of which are gaming and PT. I have a Scarlett 2i2 interface, and I think I've discovered a problem. When I've played Diablo III, Minecraft, and various emulators, the audio on my computer will sometimes glitch and slow down/drop bitrate/something. This affects programs across the board, including the aforementioned games, youtube, Netflix, WMP, and others. Once I completely close the offending game and restart it, audio/video playback returns to normal. In the past, I've thought that it could be outdated drivers, but I couldn't replicate the issue on demand, and my drivers all seemed to be up to date.

Just today, I thought again about what changes might have happened around or shortly before the time I first noticed this issue, and I realized that it could have been the interface's introduction to my computer. I have been running my speakers through my interface 24/7, but I switched them back to the computer audio jack today. I had been having constant re-glitching with an emulator beforehand, but no such problem occurred after I made the change.

Does anyone know if the interface is indeed the issue? I know a lot about computers in general, but the level at which audio drivers are switched in and out when using an audio interface is one of my weakest points.

***edit***

Here's a link to a discussion I posted on Microsoft's community website about the problem: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...8-c3c9d2d60fb2

[Craig F]

virtual machines and external audio hardware are a bad mix
there is a lot of buffer delay to get audio out of the VMs