All time classic question: Audio interface for less dropouts and low latency

According to our "resident guru" who builds DAW PC's (on a commercial basis) and has done testing with Ryzen, his findings are its great for Gaming and not so great for audio production.  Latency problems is one thing he pointed out.

I'm starting to wonder if that old piece of gear is part of the problem I'm having from time to time, high latency, dropouts if a plugin hits more than 50% load on a single core..

Maybe I should've expressed myself more clearly. Sorry, not a native english speaker.
 
Latency: I have problems with certain plugins while playing live on my keyboard. Other plugins / plugin combinations run fine. This seems to be somewhat independent of CPU load, probably because I'm not a good keyboard player and usually record with most tracks on mute and click on.
 
Dropouts: I'm getting issues when one (1) single plugin goes above 50% CPU load, spiking is what they say. Those issues tend to produce quite dramatic results, from ASIO driver obviously crashing (constant noise on master channel at max volume) up to complete system lockup in extreme cases. There's not many instruments that manage to do that, but Falcon is definitely one of them, e.g. MultiGranular Srub / Strech IRCAM with oversampling.
 
Note: IRCAM is something like e.g. Radius, a CPU-intensive algorithm for pitch-shifting and time-stretching.

Sorry I disagree with "Uncle Bob"s opinion. If you (or he) think it's true, some data would be nice. What was tested? Which CPUs, which mainboards, which chipsets, what DRAM, which soundcard(s), which software, which plugins... you get the idea. How was it measured? Against what was it compared?
 
So if anyone has a thing or two to say on the actual topic that would be great. I'm starting to wonder why I still come to this board. Slowly but surely getting hilarious.

Vilovilo
Then ,your soundcard seems to be pci based and you should have better results with a pcie based card.
Rme hdspe aio is good bargain here in Europa on the second hand market

 
Yes it helps a lot. Funny, I came to look up exactly this card on Ebay a while ago. But to be honest, this is still too expensive for me.
 
I should have clarified the price range: As cheap as possible, 200€ max.

MOTU is or has issued new drivers for some devices but not others.  One of the thing the new drivers do is add USB 3.0 support.  Many devices either did not work at all with USB 3.0 or were intermittent (drop outs).  Not sure what else the newer drivers do.  Sadly, my MOTU 896Mk3 Hybrid is not included in the new drivers and I can't use USB 3.0, which is what the USB ports on the rear I/O panel are on my new PC (USB 3.0 and USB 3.1). 
 
I also have a Focusrite 6i6 2nd gen.  The lowest (reliable) latency I can get with it is about 2ms greater than the MOTU.

So what about the cheaper USB interfaces, like from RME. Will they improve anything regarding latency or dropouts over my old M-Audio?
Seems like nothing from RME is exactly cheap.
 

occide
Latency: I have problems with certain plugins while playing live on my keyboard.

I can only assume this is not a problem with Plug-in Delay Compensation because you have ignored others request for more information about the "certain plugins" used. If this is related to plug-in delay compensation NO AMOUNT OF HARDWARE will address the situation. The latency is a fixed amount of time needed for the plug-in(s) to work correctly.
 
One way to determine if the problem is PDC related without providing details about the plug-ins involved is bypass all plug-ins in the project using the FX button in the Mix module or using the keyboard shortcut "E." If the latency goes away, the problem is PDC. Note: muting tracks and turning off plug-ins does not affect PDC. It is possible to selectively bypass FX bins by right-clicking the in the bin and selecting the option. The functional equivalent of bypassing an FX bin for a synth is disconnecting it. The disconnect button is not show when the synth rack is docked with the browser. In that case, select the synth in the synth rack and use the synth settings menu at the top of the synth rack. For more info see http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Browser.11.html
 
On the other hand, if the latency problem is driver related, the CPU, interface and driver efficiency do matter. In this case, it would be helpful to know a little about the ASIO buffer setting used in SONAR.
 

occide
Dropouts: I'm getting issues when one (1) single plugin goes above 50% CPU load, spiking is what they say.

Dropouts are buffering problems and there are a variety of tweaks that may help. Here are a couple of ideas from the troubleshooting section of the help file http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Troubleshooting.22.html. Adjusting the DropoutMsec value in AUD.ini may help too. Tweaking ExtraPluginBufs may be a good idea. Both are documented here http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=INI_Files.6.html#1134652. The AUD.Ini may be updated in Preferences > Audio > Configuration File. To see "Configuration File" make sure the Advanced radio button is selected at the bottom of the Preferences dialog.
 

glennstanton
not me :-) i only provided my insight on Delta cards...

Sorry man, didn't mean you personal, but "you" in plural.
 
You (personally) just happened to provide the link I wanted to quote. 

mettelus
^^^^ This, and synths which require high CPU usage will preclude low buffer settings. From the OP it seems there is a combination of both in play, so I would suggest analyzing that in more detail. A fast computer and great interface can only mitigate these issues so far; i.e., the preconceived solution in the thread title may not actually be it.

That means I don't have to spend money? Not sure if I'm ok with that. But I'll adapt. :)

Cactus Music
AT that price point your limited to interfaces that will all more or less perform about the same. Without proper bench mark testing there's no way at this point to reliably state which one has the best driver. 
 
Thanks for the info about the Motu. I figured by the time I have the cash on hand they would sort it out based on past history of the company. Always good to let products mature.. The Behringer X 12 was also on my list but I think I'd rather trust a company like Motu with my live sound. And bonus the ultra lite is a real audio interface too. 

I'll tell ya, if someone had recommended MOTU for a Windows box say 3+ years ago I never would have considered it as they have a reputation for being Apple support first and Windows a distant second. Times change and I picked this unit up based on Jim R reccomendations and it's just been rock solid. Yes, some drivers were better than others but they worked out the bugs and right now, at least for me under Windows 10 it just sits there and runs. The rep hangs out in the GS forums and support does listen to user requests and complaints. For example one driver wouldn't allow Protools and Studio One to change the sample rate from within the program. I and others complained and we had a beta that fixed the bug within a few days. The release version was out shortly afterwards. 
 
I'm not sure if MOTU uses off the shelf THESYSCON type drivers, I'm pretty sure they don't. I think they have another group within MOTU that writes the drivers, kind of like RME does. Maybe Jim R can comment. Whatever MOTU is doing, it works because their drivers are highly optimized and work well. Most importantly when bugs creep up, they get fixed instead of ignored. At least that's been my experience. The same goes for RME and LynX BTW. They take driver development and support seriously.
 
Whatever you buy I do suggest you make sure it works well with Ryzen before you buy or at least purchase from a place that has a liberal return policy. Ryzen is new and just because something works well with Intel doesn't mean the same results can be achieved with the Ryzen chip.