[bananas]

I don't buy that.

Everyone I know has a sub $100 USB interface hanging off their machine and swears constantly at the latency and wishes they'd just stuck with ASIO on Windows...

Personally I still have a workstation...

As for the iPods they sound horrible. The latest line of nano has noticeable noise on the outputs.

[JoeAltmaier]

Since Windows Vista there has been 100ms latency added to the audio loop. So you're experience was Xp? Keep that machine around.

USB interfaces are a terrible idea - they are polled and add latency every time.

[bananas]

That's basically rubbish and misinformation.

You're complaining about WDM audio. There's built in WaveRT and external ASIO stacks as well. The latter has become the standard on Windows for professional audio and is direct hardware access.

USB audio devices are and aren't polled. The cheap ass speakers and stuff are but anything $20+ are buffered raw device access.

I can get 8ms out of a Windows 7 laptop with ASIO over USB that isn't even tuned. My Korg Triton Studio manages about 4ms and that's seriously high end kit.