[eon1]

I think they have a fair idea of what they're talking about, but you've both rushed to reply without thoroughly reading. Seems they missed where you talked about it being okay as long as you can monitor realtime and you've missed that they missed that.

You are wrong about the need for proprietary ASIO drivers for all devices, or that many of the best audio interfaces don't support Windows.. One manufacturer is not "many" and while they are high range, it's definitely arguable whether they're the best.

Anyway, in my experience it's rarely the hardware itself that requires the majority of setup, and either way it's a once-off. Unless you're the kind of person who uses the same template for every recording session, in which case you have bigger problems than setup.