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I live in the pro audio world, almost at the bleeding edge of it I might add. What the other poster stated about sub 5ms latency is true. Get yourself an HDX system and test it out. Also, there's this, this, the entire Apollo line, and even an entry level interface that's Thunderbolt based.

IMHO, nothing will compare to using a mixer, but that's for the functionality and quality. I would never pitch a Mackie as a decent recording system, live sound, sure, but, unless you've got an Onyx, it's crap for recording (and even then, just decent). A mixer to me is something like this. My interface is a Fireface 800 and I have 0 perceived latency (so long as I'm not sending anything into the DAW for processing on my cue mix, or merely playing back from the DAW and recording new tracks). To claim something as 0 latency would be incorrect for everything, there will be latency. To claim that the conversion process adds less than X ms of latency is what we're talking about, and the Thunderbolt stuff from MOTU (not even a stellar name in the industry) is leaps and bounds beyond my Fireface (it should be, my interface is 8 years old now), clocking in at sub 1ms at the hardware itself (seen in info note in the link above), with the Fireface being a respectable 5ms at the lowest.

Long story short, if you're looking for the lowest latency and a professional setup, Thunderbolt or PCIe is king. If, as it seems from the photo you posted, you're working in a prosumer or entry level situation, than USB will suffice.

(Other sources: I work in pro audio. A number of years of experience behind the board in both live and recording environments on everything from small projects to working with the likes of Bob Mintzer. Much of my knowledge comes from the real world.)

What PCIe cards are you plugging in again?

http://www.uaudio.com/uad-plug...

http://www.uaudio.com/interfac... (with optional thunderbolt interface).

http://www.presonus.com/produc...

http://createdigitalmusic.com/...

What PCIe cards are you plugging in again?

http://www.uaudio.com/uad-plug...

http://www.uaudio.com/interfac... (with optional thunderbolt interface).

http://www.presonus.com/produc...

http://createdigitalmusic.com/...

IT would provide a cheaper alternative to the UAD card http://www.uaudio.com/products/digital/expertpak/i ndex.html
Imagine running VST plugins from Cubuase directly on the GPGPU

Perhaps I'm over using the term but I am using convolution as one would use comvoluted, to make something more complecated. The EMU DSPs do really process sound. They can do EQs, reverbs, delays, etc. Basically any FIR function that can be executed in sufficient time (they execute a fixed number of instructions per sample), I'm not sure if they can do IIR or not, but regardless. So when a game requests a sound be played from a certian location, in a certian environment, the card does the calculation for how that wave should be changed, and what speaker(s) it should be played from. Go to the kX project homepage if you want more technical information on the topic.

As for VST plugins yes, I am fully aware of how they work. YOU seem to be the one that doesn't understand. VST is just an interface, an API, for plugins to talk to hosts. There is no reason one can't have the other side of that talk to hardware instead of having it be a software alogrithm. Some companies do just that. Universal Audio, for example, has a card the UAD-1. It's basically just a DSP on a PCI card. It supports VST, DX, RTAS, and AU, but the work isn't done by the CPU for those plugins, it's done on the card's DSP (http://www.uaudio.com/products/digital/ultrapak/F AQ.html). The PowerCore PCI MkII is the same basic thing, different company (http://www.tcelectronic.com/default.asp?id=1233).

For that matter Cubase 3 does something like this. You can set it up to use basically any external hardware processors as VST plugins. It controls the automation of the external device, and handles sending and recieving audio (http://www.steinberg.de/ProductPage_sb51ba.html?P roduct_ID=2442&Langue_ID=4).

It's not all that common, since most people would rather spend the money on something else and just bounce tracks when needed, however it's not at all a technical problem. You write a plugin as normal, but rather than implementing and processing in software, you have it do it on your DSP.

That's a good response and helps to clarify the differences. I'm interested in accurate quality conversions, and I don't play games much any more. There are a couple professional DSPs, UAD-1 and PowerCore, which are add-on DSP cards which you can use to process effects plugins that are specific to their hardware. And actually, the Emu 1212 has a DSP with effects, but I knew someone who bought one and returned it. Said he didn't like the quality of the DACs and the effects were sub-par.

UAD-1
http://www.uaudio.com/products/digital/ultrapak/in dex.html

PowerCore
http://www.tcelectronic.com/PowerCoreConcept

So it sounds like there could be some potential behind this new Creative card if Creative wanted to allow that to happen. What you said makes a lot of sense with the target towards gaming and what-not. My favorite card right now is Lynx Audio. Tight clock and great sounding DACs, but another great product that may work for some people, is Benchmark DAC-1. It takes a digital input signal, and is a little box that converts the signal to analog, and it is really good at it. Costs about $1000 but it may be the best converter for anything in that ballpark. So it has audiophile and pro-audio applications. It will be interesting to see how this Creative card goes once it's been out there considering there is at least potential both in the converters and the DSP even though it's geared towards the gamer/media consumer type. Anyways, just daydreaming here I suppose.

What kind of latency does this pose?

There are currently lesser expensive audio DSP cards on the market (UAD 1 by Universal Audio/Kind of Loud, and the TC Powercore, and nowadays they don't cost much more than a GPU. However on both of those cards the latency is pretty harsh. Many audio system will compensate for the latency in some instances, although some can't/don't compensate for bussed effects, which is unfortunate as reverb is the greatest reason to use a card like this, and it is a bus effect typically, and the extra delay incurred acts to set a huge, usually inappropriate predelay.

Of course there will always be those willing to work around the potential latency issues, however that defeats the purpose that they state on their site (no more freezing/bouncing/yelling at the machine).

This is exactly why Protools TDM systems are still in vogue for higher end studios and producers. The TDM hardware does just about everything as offloaded DSP, therefore the latency is extremely low, fixed, and documented. You can look up (command-click on the track volume display actually) to find out the amount of latency on a track in samples, and if there is a need to compensate than you can figure it out. Although typically one doesn't need to compensate for only 20 samples of latency as that is less than you might find in a analog studio using digital effects.

It would be really neat if I could do some of the more complicated audio analysis (FFT etc) that requires lots of vector math using the video cards gpu.

There's a company that actually does this. The Universal Audio UAD-1 audio DSP had a previous life as a video card and a DVD hardware accelerator. Check out this thread on the UAD forums for more technical information.

Well they already make DSP cards for audio processing. Simply do a google(TM) search for "DSP card" and you will get several vendors.

I can't imagine it would take a whole lot to hack them for just their processing power outside of audio applications.