Latency - Asio Driver - Pianoteq 8

Hello everyone,

A few months ago I connected my Kawai ES110 digital piano via MIDI-usb to the laptop to use the Pianoteq 8 trial software and noticed that there was quite a bit of latency. The configuration I used was: Realtek ASIO device with a sample rate of 44100 Hz and an audio buffer size of 144 samples (3 ms) (the smallest buffer size possible using Realtek ASIO). I was clearly noticing a delay when I compared the sound from the piano's internal speakers to the sound coming out of the external speakers connected to the laptop using Pianoteq 8.

The next thing I did was install the ASIO4ALLv2 driver and kept the same settings and now the latency was lower (for some reason the sound quality was also lower). Additionally, I lowered the buffer size to 64 samples (1.3 ms) and the sound of the internal piano practically overlapped with that of the VST emitted through the external speakers (minimum latency). However, the sound quality and clarity using 64 samples or 144 samples is noticeably lower than when using the Realtek ASIO driver.

As additional information to mention that when I use the Pianoteq 8 software I see that the use of the CPU is between 15 or 25%. My laptop is an ASUS VivoBook with 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz processor and 16GB RAM.

What can I do to keep the low latency that I get when I use the ASIO4ALLv2 driver with 64 samples, but with the audio quality of when I use the Realtek ASIO driver? I read in some forum that using one driver or another did not affect the sound quality, but I can only say that even using the same buffer size with ASIO4ALLv2 and with Realtek ASIO the clearness of the audio is superior in the latter. I think that using a larger number of samples improves the sound quality, although it also increases latency.

Would it help to use an audio interface? Does it have to do more with the configuration or with the power of my laptop?

Thank you very much for your help!