But when I use ASIO to keep Melodyne Editor happy the best latency I get is 80ms !!!
Does this mean you don't see options for lower latency, or when you set it lower you get pops/crackles/dropouts? In either case, have you made sure you're running the latest drivers for you O/S? Have you ever checked our DPC latency? If not, download and run the free DPC Latency Checker; this basically measures how responsive you system is for audio-streaming, which will affect how low a buffer you can run without glitches.
The good news is I'm fairly certain there are Delta 66 users on this site who are running sub-256 sample buffers in ASIO mode without a problem, and you should be able to get there.
As an aside, keep in mind that the size of a single buffer is not the whole story. First, there are two of them (input and output), and then there is another couple of milliseconds for A/D/A conversion plus usually a bit of hidden latency in the interface and/or the bus it runs on. The net of this is that your round-trip latency is probably going to be over 600 samples (13.6ms at 44.1k) with 256-samples buffers. This is just inside the range of what most musicians consider tolerable for input monitoring of instruments. Vocalists might find it intolerable. Most musicians like to have buffers at 128-samples or less for tracking with input monitoring.
EDIT: BTW, are you sure the number you're seeing is 80ms, not 80 samples? 80ms would be ridiculouly high, as your exclamation points suggest.
post edited by brundlefly - 2011/03/14 10:44:35