Advice for a newcomer to pianotec

I would first advise you to try out your PC with an audio interface. Realtek is not at all suited to low latency. I run pianoteq with a PC much older than yours with a focusrite interface and I get a very low latency.
I first used pianoteq on my PC with a very good quality audio DAC, it worked very well but I couldn't get very low latency. Since I've been using a scarlet focurite interface (3 times cheaper than my DAC) I've been able to get much lower latency with the same PC.

I just set up an older iPad mini using a dual input USB/Lightning adapter for MIDI in and charging, works fine. I bought a no-name dongle from Amazon as the camera adapter is $$$ from Apple

I started with a Windows laptop with the ASIO4ALL driver: https://asio4all.org/ It runs the Realtek hardware with low latency and was the only way I could get Pianoteq playable.

I prefer the iPad setup as it's cleaner and less cluttered. Hopefully the Bluetooth headphones don't introduce any latency.

“External soundcard” and “audio interface” generally refer to the same thing: a USB audio interface like the Focusrite. The one you linked should be fine for your situation. However, Windows is a flaky beast with audio and it is always possible the Focusrite, or any other specific device, won’t work well with your system; so I advise buying it from somewhere that will take returns if you’re not happy with it.

You would still connect the FP-30X to your computer. The FP-30X doesn’t have an old-school MIDI out connector, nor does the Scarlett Solo have a MIDI in. That’s no problem. The latency doesn’t come from getting the MIDI in, it comes from getting the synthesized sound out. That’s what your audio interface will do. You connect the audio interface to your computer and connect your amplifier, powered speakers or headphones to the audio interface.

If you are using your laptop’s built-in speakers an audio interface won’t work without also adding external speakers or switching to headphones.

It is possible to feed the audio from your computer (not using an audio interface) back to the FP-30X to play on its speakers; getting latency low enough could be a problem. See comments on https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads...hread.html — looks like it works well on a MacBook, but too much latency on Windows.

There is always some latency. Sorry to put words in your mouth, but you don’t mean “any latency,” you mean “any noticeable latency.”

"Too much time".. fastest setup but perhaps not the ultimate quality setup is probably a new iPad standalone. You had the answer already. I run it on Windows in a DAW with an audio card but everybody is different. You might note: bt is generally slower than wired MIDI or Audio, as mentioned cables are typically not the source of noticable latency, but hardware and software both are often responsible. Any way you go, if your sample rate is low enough (PT seems to target ~44khz/48 for its best sound, but you can totally go lower esp if tweaking) and buffer is high enough (I like lowest possible, but 5-20 ms can be pleasing too), you will get a decent polyphony and note to note synthesis capability. For you i maybe would go with fastest device possible that is convenient enough for your needs, then attach a USB audio processing device for that extra boost.

When I started to use Pianoteq I had a Samsung laptop with celeron cpu. My keyboard was connected to laptop by USB cable. Latecy was unbearable with native windows drivers. I installed Asioforall - driver and latency was solved. Laptop had Realtec HD audio circuitry. Laptop's headpohone amplifier was not very good and couldn't drive my 200ohm headphones so I decided to buy Focusrite scarlet solo audio interface. Latency was the same as with asioforall -driver using Realtec circuitry. At least I couldn't notice any difference.

With focusrite audio interface volume control is way much easier than with laptop only. You have a nice physical knob to adjust volume level. Also you get line out signal to your powered monitors when you later want add those into your setup.  :=)

So basically if you have a laptop it is most likely powerful enough to run Pianoteq. You need a ASIO - driver to be able to have low enough latency to play. This applies to all other VSTs. Dedicated audio interface ( like Focusrite) in not mandatory but nice and handy to have.

Hope this clears something....

Thanks all for your comments. Using Pianoteq obviously needs some thought! I guess it really requires me to try out various options, but the challenge is doing so without committing myself to expensive kit

My Windows 11 laptop spec is:

Processor    12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1255U   1.70 GHz
Installed RAM    16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Using the ASIO for all drivers on my laptop improves latency, but is still pretty much unplayable. I'm not familiar with WASAPI, so I'll look into it.

The i-pad purchase is for many purposes - I need to do some digital art editing, plus they are so versatile I'll probably end up using it as my 'laptop' when I'm out and about.  So it might be the way to go, particularly now they have usb-c ports - with a usb-c hub I can attach the i-pad to my roland piano, power the i-pad and have a stereo audio out for headphones or other amplification. I'll avoid bluetooth connections completely....

You are already there!

Your processor is more than capable enough. It should cope with multiple instances with low latency:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en...tions.html

Not having issues with heavily occupied usb 3.0 (and above) mains powered USB hubs here. They are mostly occupied with other midi controllers. Those use up low bandwidth. I can use one of my keyboards which is a Korg with built-in audio interface perfectly well over a large USB hub. Nice low latency.

Unfortunately USB hubs are not all equal. Sometimes you have to try a few.

If using such a hub for backing up data to an external drive I would switch all the other inputs off on the USB hub. Even so I would expect such a process to work even if all the ports were occupied and the system was busy at the time. If USB 3 and above.

This is where you check to see if it works well with WASAPI - the differences can be negligible in certain systems - and I mean pleasingly fast, low latency.