OK.... so....

(This is my opinion, and it has worked wonderfully for me)

You want to ditch the ASIO4ALL and stop trying to use a factory sound card (built in) if you are really serious about making music.

You really should not use a USB hub for any of the music connections to the various devices. Put your printers and mouse and other things on the hub but allow your music stuff to have dedicated USB ports. Using a hub is forcing all the devices on it to share the bandwidth of one USB port, and while that may work ok for office devices, it doesn't work well for musical interfaces and things that need the full attention of that port and it's total bandwidth to operate fully.

Look around and select a dedicated musical interface which uses USB as it's connection to the computer, and be sure it has real ASIO drivers, and of course the number of inputs and outputs you need.... most have a minimum of 2 channels in and at least stereo out. More is better but the cost goes up accordingly. Also, having phantom power and nice audio preamps such as my Focusrite Saffire has is important.... very important too if you will be using decent condenser mics.

Yes, you will want to have the interface connected all the time when you are working on music in BB, RB, and especially if you are using 3rd party DAWs such as Sonar or some other brand. I say that and it's generally true but I have often worked on my Dell lappy using it's internal soundcard and MME driver while composing and writing songs in BB. I never use the factory card for my Sonar software because it doesn't work well. I still have and use the lappy but I also have a custom built DAW which only uses the focusrite for all sound.

The interface will have it's own software control panel and will use ASIO drivers and all your connections, inputs for 1/4" guitar inputs and XLR cables will be on the interface. The interface will generally have one or two headphone outs and line level outputs which can be connected to self powered studio reference speakers or some other sort of amp/speaker combo for monitoring and recording.

I think I answered all of the questions you posed.

Buying an interface is one of the best things you can do for your music.

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 10/27/13 07:45 AM.
You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
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