Synch issues

Dears,
Newbie here! I recently got an akai mpk play mk3 and tried to install mpc beats to my win10 desktop (with a mobo integrated sound card).
Found out an huge lag/latency recording from pads, googling around I found out that asio4all drivers could do the magic.
I installed them, the situation is for sure better but still I feel a significant difference between what I'm recording (and listening live) and the following reproduction. Since I'm no expert at all, I'd make an example: I'm using pads on my midi controller to do a classical "tum-cha-tum-cha" pattern. Even though timings on my performance are OK, when I listen to the record I can clearly see that the first "cha" is delayed, while the second "tum" is anticipated, and so on.
I'm wondering if there are settings to solve or at least minimize these latencies or if it's a common problem that might be solved by buying an external audio interface. If latter, any advice on the cheapest interface to connect my mk3 to the pc?
Thanks in advance

It's really hard to diagnose your problem... windows has so many factors and variables to keep in mind.

Installing ASIO4ALL is definitely the right start... and I'd suggest playing with buffer size settings to get it as low as you can go without hearing artifacts or audio drop outs. The buffer size length is related to the sample rate and bit depth you run at, and you might find things work better dropping to a lower sample rate like 44.1khz or 48khz at 16 bit depth, if you're running at something else. A lot of the integrated audio devices have moved from 44.1khz to 48khz natively, so figuring out if it performs better at 48khz or 44.1khz is something you'll just have to test. Similarly... 16bit used to be pretty commonly used for the standard, but you may find that 24bit (or 32bit) works better natively... it all depends on how the device and drivers are architected, but again, none of us here are likely to know any of the specific details.

The main problem is that from the details provided, none of us can tell *what* the integrated audio device is, let alone if it is any good or not. Whether the problem is your integrated audio device, the speed of your cpu, or some other factor, is pretty hard to tell.

Good luck, and it is definitely worth experimenting a bit to see if you can get better results.

Hi, thanks for the prompt reply.
What I can tell is that my desktop is running on a asrock z170 extreme 4, so the audio chipset should be a realtek alc1150. The rest of the configuration relies on a intel i5 6th gen, with 16Gb of RAM, and an ssd M.2.
Quite an old system I know, but not that old... I'm wondering getting an external audio interface to get rid of these problems, what's a budget wise choice in case?

if mpc beats will allow it. set a lower block size for the audio card less than 1024.