fwiw, i'd be interested to see how an onboard realtek compares to these also
 

For playback purposes, the onboard Realtek can be used, but requires a second speaker set and different driver mode than ASIO. For recording they fall flat though. If just mixing and/or using MIDI, could easily get by on such a setup but latency with MIDI recording would be painful.

This thread is interesting for me because I have a friend who is going to need hand holding and throwing into the pool to ever use a DAW. USB AI would be a logical choice, but some reviews for entrance units are concerning. It is hard to even make a recommendation for such. I had headed down the F/W path to mitigate USB conflicts and rarely see issues that get posted, but with USB performance I can only rely on reviews.

polarbear
I currently have the older Focusrite Scarlett 2i4. What do you guys suggest if I'm looking for something with better latency and better overall quality... But I don't need any more features. I do everything within Sonar. I don't touch anything on the interface itself or in its software that it comes with. Just the volume knob on the box, and that's it. So most of these big huge interfaces with screens and knobs and 20 inputs and outputs... I wouldn't even touch any of it. I just have an In for my Guitar, an In for my Mic, and 2 outs for my two monitors, and a pair of headphones.
 
As of now I'm probably just gonna go to the new 2nd gen Scarlett 2i4 to get the lower latency, but maybe if there's something that's truly better, but not like $2000 with tons of features I don't need, I'd consider it...

You might look at the UAD Apollo Twin.  I don't have any experience but from what I undstand it comes with a bunch of UAD plug ins and has pretty good pre's and drivers.

I didn't see anything.

Jim Roseberry
Are we talking the release driver... or the public beta?

there is no more public beta - it turned into official v4.0+71199 | September 1, 2016

OK... but we're still talking about the progeny of the public beta (that allows lower round-trip latency).  
Have you tried loading the previous gen driver?

Jim Roseberry
OK... but we're still talking about the progeny of the public beta (that allows lower round-trip latency).  
Have you tried loading the previous gen driver?

yes. but that was dated March something and wasn't working out for me at all (firmware had seen 2 upgrades since that driver and I didn't feel like messing with firmware rollback) - especially since the other AVB PRO driver just has these occasional quirks which may well be some win 10 issue (when it does not show as ASIO in Sonar, it also does not work as windows audio device...)
 
just updated win10 to latest state (was only out a week) but also device manager found an updated driver for the USB chip which I allowed it to install ... so I keep monitoring this ...

I assume you've got the AVB interfaces connected via USB-2?
The USB-3 controllers on X-79 motherboards are all 3rd-party (not Intel).  
This can cause issues similar to using a non-TI chipset Firewire controller with a Firewire audio interface.
The USB-2 ports are Intel.
 
Does this behavior happen when using a single AVB audio interface?

.

Jim Roseberry
I assume you've got the AVB interfaces connected via USB-2?
The USB-3 controllers on X-79 motherboards are all 3rd-party (not Intel).  
This can cause issues similar to using a non-TI chipset Firewire controller with a Firewire audio interface.
The USB-2 ports are Intel.
 
Does this behavior happen when using a single AVB audio interface?

yes and yes
 
usb2 - same when using only one AVB interface
 
(and also observed on a totally difference PC ...)
 

Caa2
What???
 
So it works great on USB... but only if you have the right USB?
 
How do you figure out if your existing installed system has the right USB? 

don't panic ;-) i'm sure this gets sorted out