Thanks for the responses. I have disabled the other audio drivers and I understand that the yoga isn't a powerhouse. What I'm after is the "studio in a box" concept of just laptop, mobile interface and software. The Roland quad actually works pretty well for this purpose. I liked the Tascam due to the iPad compatibility. All in all its a nice piece but there must be some hardware differences in something like the babyface for it to do away with the hidden buffers. There's too much voodoo in this part of the industry in my opinion. Now Steinberg has  "Asio guard 2" whatever the hell that is -enough already just give us the performance we need. I've been doing this for so long, (cakewalk registered user #32-really, and I read your Drumulator manual cover to cover) that I'm both amazed at what's possible, but also frustrated that these problems persist. For me it's just a hobby, but a passionate one.

I'm also trusting the Sonar reported latencies. Maybe I shouldn't.

That all to funny as I was just reading a thread from 2008 where the op was pizzed that modern interfaces were still way behind in latency issues. 
 I don't think Mac owners run into near as many issues. We choose PC and put up with it.  
Apparently writing drivers for Windows is not much fun. The nerds writing the code cheat and use regurgitated code. 
And just when they almost perfect them, Windows changes and everyone starts all over again.. 

Yeah thank Vista for that. That one really pissed the dev's off. I can remember that some companies waited almost 2 years to release Vista drivers. I think I'll try the Babyface even though I hate the breakout cable business. I guess with the built in DSP it's got the best of both worlds. Besides if it gets praises from Rosenberry it must be great.

FWIW I also use a Roland duo capture with my iPad air and Auria to do live guitar and vocals with some backing tracks. I'll record everything into the daw (I use modest compression), get all the automation perfect and then strip away the vocal and guitar so that I can "perform" the finished mix live. I love how everything just changes under your fingers as you play and sing. It really let's you concentrate on just the performance.