can you recommend a good cheap low latency board/box

[Dominus]

It's because most of people here call "latency" the echo you perceive while playing an external instrument or singing in a DAW recording session. That's why "direct monitoring" exists. The "low latency" he refers to is instead the delay between the keys pushed on a master keyboard and the sound made by the vst instrument. What I suggest is more than enough: 7-10ms latency ($100 consumer audio interfaces) and $900 saved

Please point out ONE place where anyone suggested a $1000 interface. Use direct quotes, please.

[mhog]

It's because most of people here call "latency" the echo you perceive while playing an external instrument or singing in a DAW recording session. That's why "direct monitoring" exists. The "low latency" he refers to is instead the delay between the keys pushed on a master keyboard and the sound made by the vst instrument. What I suggest is more than enough: 7-10ms latency ($100 consumer audio interfaces) and $900 saved

Please point out ONE place where anyone suggested a $1000 interface. Use direct quotes, please.

Well, if one asks for a good cheap low latency board, and even puts some examples as term of comparison/range (he infact linked Behringer, Focusrite, Presonus, Steinberg, Roland etc. all consumer products around $100) and you come out claiming "RME is the top" (... you don't say?!), I guess you are a little out of topic here, since RME are all top professional boards for studios and they all cost around $1000-$3000.

Of course RME are better than a $100 audio interface. This is not the point. The real question IMO is this: can you play your vst instruments via your master keyboard without perceptible latency with a cheap $100 audio interface? My answer is "well, yes. Infact I do it every day". I even thought that a 24bit interface had to be necessar to render 24bit to 16 bit, but someone here explained me it is not true at all, since you get the same results even with a 16 bit one (because of DAW internal architecture 32 floating point whatever...). It's you that started talking of "awful drivers", insinuating you have to spend at least $500 on a second-hand RME, or it's all shitty luck. Why should he spend so much money for something he would never exploit (12 input ports or so and 2ms less latency)?! It's just ridiculous. Oh, wait... "the more stable drivers" As if playing songs in a sequencer was a brain surgery or smth...

[Kaine]

Is that the NI TA2, rather than KA2? (Traktor Audio 2)

I stand corrected.

Uses the same controller package as it's bigger brother KA6, but for half the price and the performance goes up with less I/O to deal with. As I say, output only, but if you can live with that its a bargain.