Best Realtek driver configuration for Cakewalk on laptop

[Sven 16]

  I recently bought an Acer Swift 3 to bring on vacations and installed Cakewalk just for fun.  I thought I might be able to do a simple demo song if inspired while away.  I installed a few vst's like ezDrummer, Evolution 12, Kontakt Factory Library and Calliope and hit the road.

  Cakewalk seems to work fine but the only Driver Mode that seems to work is MME (32-bit).  The other modes either are silent, give error messages, or sound bad.   I didn't bring any of my audio interfaces to keep it simple so I just plugged a cheap keyboard my children use into the USB to see if it would work.  It works fine but there's a big latency problem.

  My question is could the latency be improved with a better driver/driver mode installed or by changing something else?  At home I use a M-Audio Keystation which works fine but with my faster desk top machines.  I can't test that keyboard until I get home.  This laptop is running Win 10:

 

 

  If the problem is the cheap keyboard I'm using or the laptop's weak processing power then I'll give up for now.  If there's something I could do to improve the latency while I'm away I'd try it.   I'm not very good at just relaxing on vacations...

Thanks.

 

 

 

[bdickens 1,236]

The Realtek driver is absolute garbage.

Audio driver has nothing to do with MIDI so it can't be the keyboard.

Edited April 16 by bdickens

[David Baay 836]

You'll need to get WASAPI Exclusive driver mode working. That will let you get down to a 3ms buffer. But I don't have any pointers for making it work if it isn't doing so right out of the box. Unless possibly some VSTi you installed added its own driver for a standalone host that is interfering with WASAPI...?

Edited April 16 by David Baay

[John Vere 1,499]

The first video on the list here will hopefully solve your issues.