Rarecomponent123
I had an old EMU card which actually worked fine, I upgraded to an Akai EIE and now suffer stutter and drop out, I've tried everything and just want to move on from it....but I need something solid and has a proven track record.
Nothing fancy...it's for recording multi track synth only ...no mikes or multi inputs.
There should be no stutters nor drop outs with any interface, till the hardware is broken or connected incorrectly. For music, EIE Pro is the better choice since it has native ASIO drivers. In any case, I would recommend to make work what you have and then decide where to move.
Connection. Connect it directly to USB 2 port on the computer. Without Hub and not to USB 3 port. Try several, especially in case you have other USB devices (even on different connectors, they sometime share hardware internally).
Drivers. Follow
http://www.akaipro.com/kb/article/1452. Make sure you do not have other interfaces activated in ASIO4ALL. Leave conservative 512 Samples buffer. May be even start with 1024. Do not expect you can go down to 64. Once everything is stable, you can try 256, 192 or even 128. But only once you see everything is stable.
To get best drivers and latency, go RME.
To get best compatibility, go Focusrite
To get best sound... you know where to go ;)
Reason for RME: they are still the reference for latency and stability.
Reason for Focusrite: works with any computer out of the box (Win, Linux, Mac), originally recommended by local store, that was confirmed by 100s of people which was connecting whatever they had to 2i2 in our conference rooms. Note, the target was NOT music production.
In general, USB interfaces have worse latency compared to PCI and even FireWare connected due to the nature of the USB bus.