The point of getting a proper sound card is - *the sound*

- Which is amazingly better (something that, perceptually, will make a significant impact)

The question in my mind is what issue does the OP have.

"All is going well with the onboard sound card, but after reading this forum, I'm wondering if I can further improve performance using one of the external audio interfaces discussed here."

Is the latency of the existing system not good enough?  Is the sound quality not good enough?  If things sound good already, buying all sorts of extra equipment might only end up being a placebo.

To elaborate even further, if your integrated sound card can run with a 128 sample buffer (Pianoteq reports latency of 2.7 ms), there is no need for an extra audio interface to improve latency. I cannot comment on sound quality. The equipment I own is cheap, but still, I do like what I hear.

FWIW, I can go down to the mimum setting (64 samples) using ASIO4ALL on my old Dell E6500 laptop, running Win8.1-64.  This laptop uses an IDT chip.

I'm glad to hear that. As you see, I don't know much about Pianoteq under Windows.

I agree with that. But a USB interface running with a 128 sample buffer would not be my first choice. I think the optimal choice is a motherboard-integrated sound card capable of running with a 128 sample buffer (relative latency of cca. 8ms) or a USB interface running with a 64 sample buffer (relative latency of cca. 8ms) . For a desktop computer, I'd go with a PCIe card, which I suspect, might allow you to reach the lowest latencies possible. But in the case the integrated sound card of your laptop does not satisfy your requirements, a USB or Firewire interface is probably the only choice.

I recorded some short examples of how the latency of different buffers sounds like. I used my USB card, so the USB latency is included! :-)  Pianoteq lags behind the Kawai piano sound by 8, 13 and 23 ms for buffers of 64, 128 and 256 samples, respectively. I don't know if the Kawai piano has the round-trip latency of a real grand piano, but I'd certainly buy only an audio interface that can get as close to the Kawai sound as possible (within my price range, I mean).

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...f_mono.mp3
http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...f_mono.mp3
http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...f_mono.mp3

I admit there is really not that much difference between the buffers of 128 and 64 samples, but I'd still choose the 64 sample buffer just to be on the safe side.

Whereas under Windows, a sound card without ASIO support in the driver (or using ASIO4ALL) would probably use a buffer of 1024 samples (I've no idea), which results in noticeable latency. Any attempts to reach buffer sizes of 256 or lower would probably fail.

FWIW, I can go down to the mimum setting (64 samples) using ASIO4ALL on my old Dell E6500 laptop, running Win8.1-64.  This laptop uses an IDT chip. Having said that, using 128 samples (the mimimum for this device) with my USB audio interface does feel like it has better (less) latency - not by a lot though.

Greg.

"All is going well with the onboard sound card, but after reading this forum, I'm wondering if I can further improve performance using one of the external audio interfaces discussed here."

Is the latency of the existing system not good enough?  Is the sound quality not good enough?  If things sound good already, buying all sorts of extra equipment might only end up being a placebo.

I've shown that latency is indeed introduced (about 5 ms, it will depend on the operating system, I use Linux), but this effect can be counteracted by smaller buffer size (ASIO buffer size under Windows). So, in effect, the total latency might stay about the same. But I don't think that an external USB sound card would actually significantly decrease latency. Well, at least not under Linux.

In the Linux world, there is no ASIO. We use a sound server called "jack", which is not a sound card driver (a driver is a different thing). Such a solution is actually more flexible, because we even can use our crappy motherboard-integrated sound cards with buffer sizes of 128 or 256 samples (64 sample buffers are too small and the jack server doesn't run with them). Whereas under Windows, a sound card without ASIO support in the driver (or using ASIO4ALL) would probably use a buffer of 1024 samples (I've no idea), which results in noticeable latency. Any attempts to reach buffer sizes of 256 or lower would probably fail. I think this has also been mentioned in this thread:

The numbers I shared are "relative" latencies. I've just made this term up. I basically measure the change of delay relative to the Kawai piano sound, and the delay changes when a different sound card or/and different buffer size is used. My Kawai has 4 zones. I let zone 1 play an internal mono piano sound, and connect the instrument into the mixer (balance set to right). Zone 2 sends MIDI signals into the computer, where Pianoteq computes the sound, and again the output of the sound card is connected into the mixer (balance set to left). Then I record the output from the mixer.

So I don't see why the numbers would not be relevant for the choice of a suitable audio interface. I just wanted to show which type of audio interfaces has the lowest latencies (I mean from my personal experience using concrete examples). The round-trip latency is not needed for that purpose. It seems that the ideal choice for someone with a desktop computer is a PCI express card which able to use a 64 sample buffer. Firewire might be the same case as USB, adds some extra latency. Whereas the PCI express interface is used for graphic cards (have you ever seen a graphic card connected by a USB bus? :-) ), so its throughput must be higher, and I guess its latency is also low. I've read some article about increased PCI latency in the case when multiple devices are connected, but PCI express is designed differently.  If I knew this a year ago, I would buy a PCI express card instead of a USB sound card.

Sorry for the long reply. The article on digital audio latency is a good read, BTW.

The integrated sound card in my 2 years old Asus laptop has a latency of 8 ms. The integrated card in my desktop PC produces a latency of 7 ms. The buffer size of 128 samples was in both measurements. A USB sound card (Sound Blaster X-fi - I know, it is a cheap one) run with the same buffer size has a latency of 13 ms. On the other hand, the Sound Blaster is capable of running with a 64 sample buffer and in this case the latency drops back to 8 ms.

To summarize, if you bought a USB sound card, the latency might actually stay the same, and the sound quality would be better. I suspect that a good PCI express or PCI card would be improve both latency and quality (assuming you have a desktop computer).

If you need extra I/O and MIDI, there is Komplete Audio 6, but it's more than double the price.
http://www.native-instruments.com/en/pr...e-audio-6/

Thanks to all for the learned replies. So to summarize, I should look at getting a quality external sound card with native ASIO drivers. That answers the question as to what chipset generates the sound when using an external device.  Can you recommend a product?

I can personally vouch for the Asus Xonar Essence series as matching the sound fidelity of the most expensive cards. I have the internal ST, which takes up a standard pci slot. There is also the STX which uses one pci express slot internally. Both require molex for clean power direct from the power supply.

You will probably want the STU, which plugs in externally, and features the same circuitry with better op amps than the ST/STX (you've got to change those manually for the internal cards if you want the better ones). If you've a PC and you go with an internal version of the card, you can use the 'Unixonar drivers', which are improved third party drivers for the cards.

Most interfaces will also work for normal system sounds, so you can completely replace the in-built card if you like (sometimes this can actually be completely disabled in the computer's BIOS).

Or you can dedicate the built-in one to system sounds (eg. through cheap multimedia speakers when you're just doing non-PT things), and the external one for ASIO use.  That's how I use it, my 'pro audio' goes through a better amp and studio monitors, my inbuilt is just going through cheap PC speakers.