Cheapest way to low latency?

[VitaminD]

my recommendation would be a card such as the m-audio revolution 7.1

it comes with ASIO drivers and goes down to 64 samples (less than 1 ms) though realistically you'll want to play it higher for complex songs..

cost me $90 at newegg with free shipping.. I think the price has gone up to $99 but its still worth it imo..

only nagging flaw is it doesnt have a midi connector.. so you'll have to route your keyboard (if its non-usb) through the mpu-401 gaming controller on your motherboard (if you have one, you probably do)

another great thing about buying a card like this is better sound quality.. the revo (and its cousin the audiophile 24/96) both support 24bit audio.. the revo will even do 24/192 playback if you were REALLY wanted to play that high.. (though 192khz playback only works on winXP w/ SP1 and uses A LOT of cpu power)

my previous soundblaster live! card annoyed me with the poor SNR hissing in the background. You are asking for a card with mediocre sound quality, but why would you want that??? eventually you're going to get upset with the *HISSHSIIISHIIS* when you turn your volume up on one of these $50 specials..

whatever you decide to do... do yourself a favor and dont go for the most budget peice you can find... get something that does 24bit audio (preferrably playback and record) and has it's own ASIO drivers.

btw there are some terratec cards built around the same 'chipset' as the revolution in the same price range and have near exact same specs.. worth a look too I bet.

good luck!

[Lunch Money]

As said, the ASIO4all drivers introduce some recording offset (at least on all machines I checked them with).
Go try for yourself: Reroute your output to the input, playback some signal with an easily recognizeable attack/transient.
Compare!

Many of those "hacked" drivers suffer from that problem.
I am however not sure whether that's a problem of the drivers or of the cards.
Should check with some pro card...

Can't do. It simply won't work at all. "Device did not initialize" or "could not start device" or whatever error it is. That's OK, it's still a great project and I'm glad it works for other people with laptops.

Greg