Does anyone have experience of using VSTi's (soft synths) with a really good quality sound card????

I'm into virtual instruments in a big way, but I'm using a very cheap sound card and there's about a half second delay from when I press a key on my keyboard, to the sound coming out of the speaker.

I've read that some of the good sound cards like Delta's and Echo's can get this time gap (latency) down to 7 or 8ms. The manufacturers of these cards tell us that this time delay is negligable and that their cards would therefore be ideal for live triggering of VSTi's.

Can anyone confirm whether or not this is true???? Can you REALLY play VSTi's in a live situation and get away with the 7 or 8 milisecond time delay???

I'm on the verge of selling my synth for a sound card so please don't let me do something I'll regret.

Thanks for this!

I use an inexpensive soundcard, Soundblaster 16, on both my laptop and desktop. They work fine with Native Instruments B4 and FM7. The latency settings are 10 on my Desktop[p3] and 20 on my Laptop[p2]. You should use Direct sound and not an emulator..

I use Macs so I don't really have that problem . Some of my friends with PCs say they have that problem as well . They bought the AUDIOPHILE 2496 card and the problem is almost nonexistant . A multimedia card is for games ONLY , with the low cost of pro audio cards , there is no excuse for not getting one . The pro audio cards like the AUDIOPHILE 2496 costs less than $170.00 and they have been made for softare recording and software synthesis . Multimedia cards are just made for Diablo or whatever games you want to play . The point - Multimedia cards have instructions for games and pro audio cards have instructions for sound recording , processing , software synthesis . Get a pro audio card , read the back to find out it's requirements and make sure you SURPASS them . Erase the driver for the multimedia card and make sure ALL DLL files for it are gone . Install the driver for the pro audio card .

If you want to use softsynths for live use you do have to have a good soundcard. It is usually down to the fact that they update the drivers for them and the hardware itself is does the required calculation much faster and more efficiently. If you are going to buy a decent sound card make sure you get no more than 8m/s delay.....anymore than that and it may be very annoying

Go to the "Audio" window of your sound card setting, there should be showed the latency of your soundcard, usually there are 2 voices about Latency and the defaul should be set up at 92 and the second one at 92 also. I don't know what your soundcard is but they all use the same setting pretty much. If you experience problem like it may be because the second Latency value is higher then the first. In any case if the value are already the same try to lower down the second value and listen til you don't here the delay anymore. This is the only trick I know that works.

Cheers,
Maximo