The Soundblaster Xfi is a good card and goes to 1ms and runs like a charm. Most cases the CPU load and use of many VSTi/VST plugins will run the processorload over multicore’s. The Soundblaster Driver is as steasy as can be, a good test is Wavelab and a very very low latency setting, it works. But like all are struggling because they want and Processorload/VSTi/VST and Low Latency. The middle is about 8ms of latency, where on a modern machine i have plenty speed left and no probs. There was a post that a users found 8ms not enough… and because of his classical music education and use of protools was debunking Cubase for not having a lower latency. So i quess it is more up to the user. I say 8ms latency and a speedy system is what is a good middle road. Also expensive soundcards can have BAD drivers. And USB is not as fast as you think. Dropping an internal card might save you headroom for latency en speed… For instance many users have a Focusrite USB Audio, well the drivers where so bad i dropped it straight back to the SB and sticked with that. The Drivers are sometimes more important then the audio divice…