USB soundcards were so featureful compared to onboard or even the pci stuff when they came out, like the sound blaster extigy. I liked positional audio and all of the spdif and toslinks. However, it, by itself, even with ASIO had latency up around 30-50ms.
I have an external "headphone out and 2 microphone in" USB interface now, and it's latency is still in the 5-15ms range, so I use onboard to write and headphones to master. At one point I bought a macbook air and a FireWire interface, but the screen was no good and the single FireWire interface tied my hands. I also have a few pci cards that I've been collecting parts for, like an m-audio 8x8 interface, there's a box that connects to the back of the soundcard with some 30-40 pin d-sub. I finally got all 5 or 6 parts and don't really have a computer to put it in anymore! I wanted that card for around 10 years by the time I found all of it...
I'm assuming anything midi-ish can just use quantization and only the player will notice, the final mix should sound ok.
I have an external "headphone out and 2 microphone in" USB interface now, and it's latency is still in the 5-15ms range, so I use onboard to write and headphones to master. At one point I bought a macbook air and a FireWire interface, but the screen was no good and the single FireWire interface tied my hands. I also have a few pci cards that I've been collecting parts for, like an m-audio 8x8 interface, there's a box that connects to the back of the soundcard with some 30-40 pin d-sub. I finally got all 5 or 6 parts and don't really have a computer to put it in anymore! I wanted that card for around 10 years by the time I found all of it...
I'm assuming anything midi-ish can just use quantization and only the player will notice, the final mix should sound ok.