This doesnt really apply to me but could if I were to travel w just a midi keyboard and laptop. Years ago, with midi keyboard and an old core 2 laptop on Win7 I tried getting away with using the the on board sound card and windows drivers and the reults were abysmal. I tried asio4all with the same set up also with poor results. If I used my old m audio firewire interface and asio the results were fine. I concluded that it was the AI that made the difference. From what I have been reading lately though it seems an interface may not be necessary if you are completely vst based. True?

You will need Win10 and SONAR 2016.11 or newer to run WASPI exclusive mode. If you have Win10 installed and are using an older version of SONAR, try the demo.

So scook, are you saying that running without an AI really wasnt feasible until Win10? Thats what I was really wondering. I always thought an AI was necessary even if just using vsts but lately have wondered if I was wrong about that. Here at home I use an Octacapture. A year or so ago I picked up a little Scarlett 2i2 to bring along w a midi keyboard and laptop when I travel. It would be nice to not carry along the 2i2 if I dont need it. I will experiment with the laptop (i7, win10) and WASAPI and see how that works.

filtersweep . . . one thing I found out about using the WASAPI Exclusive drivers on my laptop was: how do I monitor the sound ? The laptop speakers have no useful bass response, and the headphone plugin has surprisingly low fidelity as compared to any of my USB audio devices.

Yeah, I doubt I'll ever do without my Q-C when "out and about." After all, it's only one more small box and cable and it all fits very well into my laptop back pack

filtersweep
So scook, are you saying that running without an AI really wasnt feasible until Win10?

It depends on the amount of latency one can tolerate and how one is using the DAW. I barely remember what it was like running Pro Audio 9. That was the last DAW I used before buying my first dedicated interface. The new WASPI exclusive mode does achieve pretty low latency but as mentioned above, there may be other hardware considerations. The last "portable" computer I ever used was one of these with a hard drive in one of the floppy slots and an Orchid Tiny Turbo 286 Card replacing the 8088 processor.
 

scook, you might be much older than I imagined ?

It is a possibility.

I bet that was heavy scook

scook

filtersweep
So scook, are you saying that running without an AI really wasnt feasible until Win10?

It depends on the amount of latency one can tolerate and how one is using the DAW. I barely remember what it was like running Pro Audio 9. That was the last DAW I used before buying my first dedicated interface. The new WASPI exclusive mode does achieve pretty low latency but as mentioned above, there may be other hardware considerations. The last "portable" computer I ever used was one of these with a hard drive in one of the floppy slots and an Orchid Tiny Turbo 286 Card replacing the 8088 processor.
 

Wow a lot of memories. The laptops of the day. They were such a pain to repair. Now a days computers are like bic lighters, when they run out of fluid throw them away.