You're assuming that the computer behaved this way out of the box. It didn't. As long as I was doing smaller projects and testing, the latency change (who knows which driver "update" it was) wasn't an issue so it was the kind of thing I figured I'd look into "someday."
 
"Someday" arrived last Thursday, when I knew I had to mix a large project over the weekend that also required overdubs (when you're mostly a post-production suite, 20 ms of latency isn't a big deal). I started investigating Friday night, and had an answer on Saturday. Didn't have to "put up" with it for too long...and no matter how cool Jim and Scott are, I question how much they would have appreciated a call at 2AM on Saturday morning.
 

I have always disabled the motherboard audio and on-board graphics in BIOS, so no drivers get installed.

As for HDMI audio devices, I simply disable them in Window's system device manager (and always have) on the basis that since I have no speakers attached to the screen nor is it connected by HDMI there is no point in drivers being loaded to occupy resources or potentially cause problems.

I had no trouble at all getting a UA-101 to run smoothly at minimum sample size buffers (112 sample, 8.something ms round trip), once I attached it to a PCIe USB card rather than the motherboard's USB controllers. Too much contention on them due to attached MIDI devices, resulting in only a 10-12ms round trip latency at best if the UA-101 was attached to them.

Current RME UFX runs at 48 samples with no problems, again connected to dedicated PCIe USB card.

Sanderxpander

Anderton
Thanks! To which I would add...set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 is essential for finding zombie MIDI ports so you can delete them and get around the Windows MIDI port limit (used to be 10, I think it's 16 or 32 now).
 
FYI Microsoft is investigating the MIDI port limit thing. I've been involved in that dialog, mostly as a nag 

I'm pretty sure it's still ten in Windows 7 at least, I looked into it when it came up for me. Some reports claim that the limit has been fixed in Windows 7 but I know for a fact that's not the case. For anyone who doesn't enjoy registry diving, you can install the Korg midi driver, it comes with a utility to remove old and phantom drivers.
EDIT: glad to hear at least some dialog is going on there

Its in 8 as well SE...I just had to delete some to make room for Korg Midi drivers that would not run and were posted as #12 in the midi slots..got them dropped to #7 and they work. So yeah, limit still applies even in 8. (8.1 to be exact on my system).

Anderton
You're assuming...

If I had assumed anything, it was that the all the older boys using SONAR have been hip to turning off the on board audio in Bios for over a decade, and disabling HDMI audio in Device Manager for nearly a decade, but it seems like I'm learning new stuff every day.
 
:-)
 
 

The reason I recommended disabling the on-board audio device in BIOS was to have only the possible culprits listed in the device manager.
 
Disabling for me resulted in 2 fewer items listed in the device manager that I did not have to disable. And only one HD device listed under System. The MS audio and one of the System HD devices were gone. Hence they were not associated with the video card audio device.
 
After disabling the remaining System HD audio device, I now only have the emu audio interface listed, in the device manager, in the windows sound dialog, and the audio inputs/outputs of the device manager.
 
For me all windows audio appears to use the windows driver which I have routed via patch-mix to an asio output to the speakers.  No windows generated audio has been affected.
 
However, as Noel warned, disabling the on-board device may not work with USB interfaces.

mike_mccue
 
 it seems like I'm learning new stuff every day.
 
:-)
 
 

Dad is that you ?
 
 

 
come on Mike not everybody here can afford to get a custom built music computer from the big boys 
 
Kenny

Actually those custom builds, at least studio cats, ( not sure about the other one mentioned)  are not any more expensive than your typical off the shelf box. I've been shopping around and was blown away at what little you get in a HP, Dell, Lenovo etc pre built desktop. By the time you "build your own" with proper components your probably $$ over what the same Studio Cat's sell for.
 
I too am surprised by this thread as this is sort of common practice for setting up a DAW. 
I never install audio drivers other than for my interface's if I have that choice. 
I've never had issues with other apps playing their audio through my interface's.  Only once and it was because I had failed to update ActiveX or something like that. 
 
And right now as example I installed W8.1 on my office desktop and I have just bought a new Nvidia card so I could use the HDMI to my 32" TV. VLC and Media player play just fine through my Tascam interface which is hooked up to a good Hi Fi system. I'm not using the TV's audio.  I did nothing special to make this happen. 
 If I was using it for Sonar I would disable the Nvidia Audio driver as a matter of course. But I would also disable a lot of other stuff too. I'm in the habit of disabling every damn thing I can get away with,  without freaking the computer out. Always have been.  

mike_mccue

Anderton
You're assuming...

If I had assumed anything, it was that the all the older boys using SONAR have been hip to turning off the on board audio in Bios for over a decade, and disabling HDMI audio in Device Manager for nearly a decade, but it seems like I'm learning new stuff every day.

 
Yes, what you've learned is not everyone runs immediately to device manager every time an update occurs to see if it installed something audio-related under "System Devices" that has to be disabled before the real object of what needs to be disabled in "Sound, Video, and Game Controllers" can in fact be disabled, given that it did not offer that option.

As I said previously, I tried to disable HDMI driver under Sound, Video, and Game Controllers, but there was no option to do so until I disabled the HD Host Controller in System Devices. Hopefully this thread will allow others to learn about this; I'd be surprised is this is common knowledge, given that I didn't find any references on the web.
 
P. S. Still waiting to hear about which USB interfaces are able to achieve a round-trip latency of under 4 ms, including everything (A/D conversion, USB layers, and ASIO sample buffers). That article from PreSonus seems to imply it's impossible, but if such a thing really does exist, I'd buy it in a heartbeat - a USB interface with under 4ms latency would be fantastic for laptop live performances with amp sims.

johnnyV
Actually those custom builds, at least studio cats, ( not sure about the other one mentioned)  are not any more expensive than your typical off the shelf box. I've been shopping around and was blown away at what little you get in a HP, Dell, Lenovo etc pre built desktop. By the time you "build your own" with proper components your probably $$ over what the same Studio Cat's sell for.

 
Exactly. The off the shelf computer likely won't have enough RAM or hard drive space, for starters. By the time you add what you need, you're better off with the custom machine, which will also likely be more easily expandable and run more quietly because it's designed to do that.
 

I too am surprised by this thread as this is sort of common practice for setting up a DAW.

Yes, but if it was as simple as just disabling the device I never would have started this thread. What seems highly unusual (at least to me) is having a driver installed under Sound, Video, and Game controllers with no option to disable unless you happen to find and disable the HD Host Controller device in the middle of a zillion devices under System Devices, assuming one would even think to unfold System Devices to look for an audio driver that could be disabled so it would be possible to disable the one in Sound, Video, and Game controllers (and even then, as detailed in a subsequent post, disabling the HD Host Controller only made the AMD device disappear temporarily; it could be disabled properly only after a reboot, at which point the Disable option appeared mysteriously in the AMD device's right-click context menu). If that's a common practice, wow...I've enabled and disabled tons of devices but never had to deal with anything that convoluted. I doubt most people here would consider that method of disabling a device as standard operating procedure, but maybe it is. If so, I'd never heard of it so I thought it was worth mentioning.
 
To add insult to injury, when I download drivers I always try to download just the driver and avoid the fancy control panels and other stuff.

Well Greg your discovery is very important for a lot of systems that will be crippled by that and it sure doesn't hurt to remind folks of this again and again. It is the best reason for this forum existing and all these little tips have been a great lifesaver for me.   
 
And issues with video card audio drivers has been pretty common topic on this forum. You don't see it as much as in the past possibly because we now have more horsepower which hides these little gremlins form most users. It was more of an XP thing I guess. 
And on this forum it's pretty standard to advise someone who is having Sonar audio issues to "try disabling your on board sound"  
This advice is usually followed by the disclaimer that this fix is only for some systems and not global to all systems. Most people never have a issue with on board audio lurking in the background but for some of us it was the correct solution. 
And that both Creative and ASIO4all will cause problems. Personal experience and dozens of threads from others make this set in stone for me.  
 
And some of this is dependent on if your using your DAW as your "other" computer as well. As I build mine for audio only there is no point having unwanted drivers installed. Saves time when building not to have to install a bunch of software and drivers that are not needed for music.