I'm playing a rather fast piece on my keyboard and the latency is noticeable enough that it's disruptive. My keyboard midi output goes into my desktop running windows 7, BIAB 2016 (438), I have an audiophile 2496 using the ASIO drivers and its audio output goes to my stereo. I thought this kind of setup typically would have latencies down around 5ms, which I didn't think I could hear. Am I just out of luck trying to play really fast pieces with backing tracks? Right now my piano notes are coming out just enough later than the sound from the backing track that I can't play right on the beat.

Windows 10 has a huge improvement in handling midi and sound processing - finally catching up to Apple in media production.
BIAB has manual latency adjustment built in. Look at your output settings.
Garth

I'm using a DXi synth, so the latency is set automatically and won't allow that manual setting to be changed.

Noted you are using Asio driver. You can adjust latency manually in the Asio driver control panel in windows settings control panel.
Garth

Mark, he's right; for ASIO the buffers adjustment is in the ASIO controls, not BIAB. Some less expensive cards just allow a choice of three settings, loosely called recording, playback, or something averaging those. If that's what you have, you want to use the Recording setting for the fewest buffers. Then you may have to change to the average or playback setting for playback, especially mixing.

Is that one of the old M-Audio 2496 cards? I loved that card in its day. It should still be capable of low latency but only assuming the drivers have kept up. You didn't say what version of Windows you have. If it is 10, is there even a driver for this anymore? Tell us more about your system.

By the way, you are correct about latency. I've read that a good player is not bothered until it gets longer than maybe 6 or 7 milliseconds.

It's been awhile since I have used ASIO, but I seem to recall lower latency with SMALL buffers (which seemed counter-intuitive.)

Thanks for all suggestions. I was prepared to start reducing the size of the ASIO buffer, but decided to play the same song as yesterday before I changed anything and now there is no detectable latency. So now I'm double perplexed. I guess it's possible my computer was being consumed doing something else which caused the noticeable latency. Anyway, I know what to try if this happens again, my M-Audio interface to the ASIO driver allows the buffer size to be changed from the current value of 512 down to 384, 256, 128 and 64.

Matt, yes this is one of the old M-Audio 2496 cards, and I love it too. This is the second computer I've used it in, it just keeps ticking along. This machine is windows 7, a Dell with 2.4G quadcore, so it's always been more than adequate for the things I do. I plan to use Windows 7 until Microsoft stops support in a few years.

I think you are onto something. Any number of programs in the background could affect you. I always reboot before recording. Then check Process Monitor to see what’s running.

512 should be both stable and adequate for latency.

I wonder if that card works in Windows 10. It actually might if installed in compatibility mode for 7.

The card might work, but the machine I have won't run windows 10. So I'm holding out until windows 7 breathes it's last gasp, then I'll upgrade everything.