Hi I am having a small problem that I hope you can help with. I am running Music Creator 6 at the moment and have just plugged in a M Audio oxygen61 keyboard controller. I was getting a delay between pressing the keys and a sound from the computer. At the moment I am using the on board sound card and speakers. I heaqr on the forumm that this might be a result of the driver and installing ASIO might work better. I did this but now I am not getting any sound at all. Is there something I am not doing correctly. Many thanks for any help
 
Andi

Usually, the on board sound card doesn't work well, if at all, with ASIO.  You should look into getting a designated USB interface that runs ASIO.  The latency you are experiencing is normal with the factory cards and the MME driver they use by default.
 
In the mean time, you can try downloading a free program called ASIO4ALL, install it and see if it works. Sometimes, A4A helps and lets you run OK until you can get a better interface and use native ASIO.   A4A fools the MME driver and hardware into thinking it is ASIO. Personally, I could never get A4A to run on my computers. Perhaps you can.

Thank you for your help I will let you know how I get on.

Excuse me if you already know the following, but you have not mentioned that in OP:
 
1) MIDI produce no sound by itself. MIDI should be interpreted by some synth for that
2) there are hardware and software MIDI synth
3) Windows historically has build in software wave table based MIDI synth which it exposed AS hardware synth to all programs. It has worse quality and latency from all available variants, also it always use Windows mixer for output and so it can not be used in parallel with ASIO (on the same hardware). The first you should check is that you have disabled it in Creater. Check Preferences/MIDI and de-select all output MIDI ports not related to your Oxygen (to avoid MIDI files opening problems, de-select ALL MIDI outputs).
4) you should use some software synth inside Creater. For General MIDI files you can use TTS-1. It should be used by default when you open MIDI files and have no MIDI output devices, but that is worse to check.
5) software synth generate audio, but it still has to be delivered to the hardware. There are several "routes" between a music program and the hardware, Creator support all of them:
5.1) MME. Most compatible, mix sound coming from other programs and convert bitrate when required. Due to the nature and required processing, introduce latency and produce bad output quality. There target is to use as less computer resources, and so they scarify the quality and use huge buffers (smaller buffers == more work).
5.2) WDM with KS (Kernel Streaming). KS is used when you select WDM, the driver support KS and the audio information is "compatible". You get less/close to no processing and so improved quality and lower latency. No mixing with other programs possible.
5.3) ASIO. The only target is to deliver unchanged audio stream to the hardware as fast as possible. No mixing, no volume control.
5.4)  Pro. music audio interfaces have specialized ASIO drivers. And that is the way to go once you have one of such interfaces
5.5)  Consumer audio interfaces (build-in Realtek chips) have WDM drivers only. When everything setup correctly and the driver has KS support, the performance is not so bad. Unfortunately, it is easy to step one mm from the route and fall back to "normal" (processed) WDM scenario. And so:
5.5.a) ASIO4ALL is an intermediate driver, which tries to get the best from existing WDM driver and deliver to user programs "ASIO" interface. It works inside the kernel and so have more options to talk with WDM then user program (Creator). Depending on many factors, you can get even less latency then in WDM/KS scenario and that is normally easier to achieve then (blindly) attempting to make WDM/KS work properly. But that is not "plug-and-play with perfect results" solution. You still should find good options inside ASIO4ALL control panel  and Creator settings. There are tons of information in the Internet, but carefully filter it (most people do not understand the topic, either describing ASIO4ALL as a "voodoo" or as a "audio killer").
 

Don't scrimp on the interface.  Spend the money to get a good one that meets your needs. Avoid the multiple use interfaces built into something else. Get a solid interface and it will serve you well for a very long time and give you little to no problems when it's set up properly.
 
My Focusrite interface has been running on several computers through the years and it's as solid today, as the day I bought it about 10 years ago.

Hi and thanks for all the info you have both supplied I will try and digest it all but tech is not my strong point and as you rightly supposed this is all new to me.
 
Am I right in thinking that as the keyboard id a usb connector it will not be affected by the interface for input.
 
I have just gone to install Music Creator 6 on my new windows 8 PC but noticed on the box that win 8 is not supported. Does anyone run MC 6 on win 8
 
Thanks again

Your Midi Keyboard will show up as a midi input device among the various other input devices both midi and audio inside MC.  
 
If you are wishing to use it to play a track, you would select IT as the input source for a track.  The interface you select would be set as the audio output for the master buss, normally by default.
 
So essentially, all you would do is what you have to do for each track anyway, and that is to choose it's input source. When you add a track, you select either a midi or an audio track. The output to a track is set to master buss unless it's a midi track, in which case it's set to the audio track with the synth you are using. That synth track outputs to the master audio buss.
 
It might sound complicated but it's really quite simple.
INPUTS
Audio source >> audio track
Midi source >>  midi track.
 
OUTPUTS
Midi track >> a specific synth located and loaded into an audio track >> master buss to the interface and speakers.
Audio track >> master buss to the interface and speakers.
 
 
Remember, we all had to start somewhere. You're not alone in going through this learning process.