Please, bear with me for a few minutes. I have and Asus P5Q-E motherboard with onboard audio chip which cannot be used for DAW purposes, no matter which driver and mode one uses. I've tried WASAPI and ASIO4ALL, nothing works satisfactorily. So I have Creative Audigy 2 ZS which has it's own ASIO drivers and that's what I work with now. It works fine as long as I don't work with many tracks simultaneously and as long as I don't use VST effects. If I do use many VST tracks and some effects, audio shutters and chokes and finaly forces me to restart the session.
I don't need audio inputs;  I work only with VST instruments. So I wonder, would Roland's Duo-capture be the right thing for me? I need fast and stable ASIO driven interface, so I can burden my Sonar session with many VST tracks and not too many effects. My computer isn't underspeced, CPU, RAM and HDD metters don't peak and I have plenty of power left when audio drops down, probably because Audigy 2 ZS isn't good enough for DAW.
So - does anyone know if Duo-capture realy has low-latency ASIO driver as advertised on Roland web page? Would I be wrong if I assume that Duo-capture has the same ASIO driver as it's bigger brothers like Tri-capture or Quad-capture? Those interfaces are very expensive to me and, sincerely, I don't need features they offer. I don't need inputs, preamps, direct monitoring etc. Or, since it's much cheaper than bigger ones, does Duo-capture has some mediocre ASIO driver which wouldn't be much of an improvement to my current ASIO driver provided by Audigy 2 ZS?
I've tried all possible combinations of drivers and ASIO4ALL and WASAPI configurations available on my present configuration and Audigy 2 ZS's ASIO driver works better than any of those, but even loosing the latencies to slow settings doesn't help big projects and audio freeze downs are very frequent.
I'm in no way biased toward Duo-capture. If anyone can recommend audio interface without many bells and whistles, but with excellent ASIO driver, please do so. Keep in mind my budget is 150 dollars max.
Thanks in advance.
Best regards,
Ivan

If you really don't need audio inputs then you also don't need ultra low latency.  Increase the audio buffer size to give the poor SoundBlaster a break. Not by a little bit here and there... push it to max.   If you're only doing playback, who cares if there is a half second pause between pressing play and hearing the output? 
If you can't get the SoundBlaster to run without crackles and dropouts then a different sound card won't help.
 
You should also run a DPC latency check.  Wifi dongles can be a big problem for real time audio, grabbing cpu resources when they feel fit, causing dropouts and crackles.
 
 
 

Erm...I left out a small detail. I use A800pro for actually playing and recording vst instruments, so I do need low latency. I'm not after a benchmarking, but I want to be able to play and record many tracks in one session without noticable lag and without audio issues.

Right,  that's ok.  But you still need to find the source of the dropouts.
 
An expensive sound card will give you high audio quality from your speakers but won't cure dropouts by default.
The review here answers all the questions you have about the Roland box.  It is the latest version of what was once branded Cakewalk... and will do what you want.  (I have the Edirol version, the one that then became branded by Cakewalk)

You've been of great help and I'm thankfull, but would you suggest Duo-capture would perform equally well ASIO-wise as Duo-capture EX, which You've provided review for? Duo-capture EX costs 250 dollars and Duo-capture costs 100 dollars (prices in Croatia).

 
Ooops,   my bad.
 
The Duo-capture (not EX) will do what you want and Roland drivers are very good.  You'll be able to get nice low latency with this kit.
 
HOWEVER, you still need to find what is causing the crackles and dropouts with your current setup.  This forum is full of posts from people with some very expensive audio interfaces that suffer from dropouts. The fault is not the audio interface, it's other things going on in your computer.

Thank You very much. This is exactly an answer I was hoping for. As for the rest of the system, no worries there.
Best regards.

i have the Quad-Capture, and it rules compared to what i replaced it with (Tascam us-144/us-122l, as Tascam's 64 bit drivers SUCKED SO BAD).  i would take a look at this: http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/pc-optimization-guide-for-windows-7/ as it shows how to step-by-step set up a PC for better audio.  i actually had to refer to this the other night because i was getting some crackles, etc & saw that a couple boxes that needed checks did not have them.  now my audio is awesome again

Wow that is one of the worst guides I've ever seen for "optimizing" your computer. It could lead to a score of problems and it doesn't even really tell what setting it's changing and what that means for most of them.

The soundblaster is not know for low latency, so the Roland would most likely be an improvement.  Many (many many) moons ago I had an SB and it sounded pretty good.  But that was before soft synths.  One thing the emu chips used to do was work at 48 kHz rate.  It re-jiggered it on the fly for 44.1 (or any other rate).  This caused all kinds of ... artifacts to put it politely.  Don't know if that is still the case, but it would be something to check out.
 
Karyn is also right - there is likely to be something else causing the latency/crackling that a new interface won't fix.  See if you can figure that out.  In the meanwhile get the Roland unit (or any other music interface, not a sound card) but be able to return it.  You'll probably pay a few more bucks for the privilege, but if it doesn't cure your problem you ain't out the full price, either.
 
Good luck.
 
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