I poked a bit around in the internet to find me a decent Audiointerface. Without one, I can get reasonably speedy reactiontimes using ASIO4ALL, but I thought there might be something better. Sadly, many reiews only deal with Audioquality and Features, rarely one does any tests of the ASIO drive (if there even is any). Reviews I saw of the Focusright Products gave them extremely bad marks in ASIO quality .... very slow drivers. Now ESI has a few USB products with ASIO, where I don't know about the driver quality. Apparently it's fast. For Presonus etc I have not yet found anything, and RME is just too expensive.
 
Does anyone have a bit of insight here on available, current devices and the ASIO quality?

i used an esi waveterminal-192 for years, the drivers were rock solid and great latency, but that was a pci card...  i have it sitting in the cupboard, waiting for a new desktop, as i'm laptop only at the mo
hth

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, PCI(e) cards are usually faster, bypassing any issues with USB Clock etc. But with the right USB drivers, it's a viable solution from what I hear ... but you need solid and fast ASIO drivers to at least minimize that delay (within the chain of many more delays). I want it to be usb, so I can use it as my holiday solution when bringing the laptop with me. But from what I hear (and also from you now) is that ESI produces a good ASIO driver.
 
Also looking at Presonus now ... I guess their product should be ok, given that they also make a DAW software.

Focusrite and the latest TASCAM products have been reported to have very good drivers.  I don't have either product, so I can't confirm, but I have seen a lot of comments praising their performance.

MOTU USB audio interfaces are excellent.
 
The Ultralite AVB offers a lot of bang-for-the-buck.

• 4.9ms total round-trip latency at a 64-samples ASIO buffer size/44.1k
• Noise-floor ~-110dB (which is very good at that price-point)
• Enough I/O to record a band or full drum-kit
• Onboard mixing/routing (very similar to RME's Total Mix)
• Solid drivers

 

I like my RME UFX. Very solid drivers, good preamps, route anything to anything, and direct to USB recording which is great in a live setting. But agree with Jim too.
 
Over the years it seems the RME and MOTU interfaces always rise to the top in these discussions. Apogee and a few others get a lot of love in the higher price range and Focusrite, Tascam, and Presonus being solid in bit lower price group. 
 
I'm sure there are other solid products as well but these always get talked about in the forum when people ask about interfaces.
 
Budget is the biggest question, the RME interfaces start at ~$750 and go up. MOTU about the same although they have a few at lower price points. The Focusrite/Tascam/Presonus/Other products go all the way down to ~$150 or sometimes even less. If you're looking at Apogee, Antelope, Lynx then you're probably already an expert at these things and I want to come record in your studio :)
 
gabo

your requirements and your budget are the most important variables which need to be addressed before anyone can really recommend anything for you.  even the low end soundcards like the Presonus USB and Focusrite 2i2 have decent ASIO drivers which will be better than any soundcard which needs ASIO4ALL to operate.  (ASIO4ALL is just a WDM wrapper which makes windows apps thinks it's using ASIO when in reality it's using WDM).

Most interfaces will work fine w/ most music computer systems.  Most of the problem comes from latency, which is how long it takes for sound to come into the computer (for recording) and then back out (so you can hear what you recorded).  If you have over 10 ms of delay, it can really be a problem.  However, most interfaces today have the ability to send the track to be recorded directly out of the interface, too (thereby skipping the latency).  So all is well.
 
All modern music interfaces cards will perform as above (or every one I've heard about), so you are good to go.  When you read user reviews on a manufacture's site etc. you usually get comments from people that have had problems, so the unit looks like trouble.  Fewer people write in to say it works great and "I didn't' have to think about it."  Since different PCs are stuffed w/ any number of choices for components, nobody can test all the variations until the public gets ahold of it.  You might be the unlucky 1 out of a 100 whose computer just won't work w/ a specific unit and driver.  The solution is to buy from a retailer who lets you return your buy for another, similarly-priced unit which should work - 99 out of a hundred times.
 
At this point, using SONAR, I'd check out the TASCAM units (Gibson owns Cake and TASCAM so everyone uses those at the office).  TASCAM is as cheap as anyone on the lower end, and has the best bang for buck in a couple of categories.  One good thing is that TASCAM (never known for great drivers) hired their own driver writers and their drivers work across the range of their newer products.   Updates seem to be coming out regular-like and each iteration seems to have less latency.  And since TAScAM is coming out w/ new units, it looks to be a good bet.  See the latest Tape Op
 
http://tapeop.com/
 
for a review of their 20x20 unit.

I have the 16x08 TASCAM.  Works great.  Not the lowest latency, but sub 9ms RTL @44.1 with 64 sample buffer is good enough for me.
 
 

Never look on the internet and customer reviews for this sort of info. Reading posts on actual music forums will give you a much better idea of what's being used by experienced people. Reviews on sites like Amazon and such are full of posts by total idiots who don't have a clue about setting up the equipment. 
Right now there has never been more choices for good interfaces. Most are USB. Seems internal cards died with PCIe.  Firewire is fading fast and thunderbolt is still wait and see and Mac drivers. 
Tascam is really taking off as they are finally writing good solid drivers.  
Nothing wrong with Focusrite. Very good stuff. Both are my recommendation in the lower price points. I will buy RME next upgrade as it is over and over the most talked about in a good way. 
Here's a little blurb I put together with a shopping list that include all the details you need to think about. 
Make sure you get all the features you require. 
http://www.cactusmusic.ca...0Interface%20blurb.rtf