Question about Midi interfaces and Latency
 

Here's the deal:
I'm fairly knowledgeable when it comes to digital audio, midi, etc, but I've run into a problem for which I can't find a solution. Perhaps some experience with various products will be able to help me. I have a Korg N364 Synthesizer which is plugged in to a SB Live! (Dell OEM version, slightly different than the retail version) via a MIDI --> DA-15 connector. I am using Reason 3.0. I have the device set up properly in the "control Surfaces and Keyboards" menu, but I'm having trouble with input latency. Whenever I press a key on the keyboard, there is about 10ms of lag before the note sounds (through the softsynth). I've tried fiddling around with the latency and latency compensation sliders, aswell as lowering the Sample Rate. I think the issue might be because of a few things:

The DA-15 game port is analog, so a DAC might be delaying the input.
The DA-15 is on the SBLive, but my processing and output sound card is the onboard Realtek.
My soundcard is DX, not ASIO. I have heard that you need an ASIO card to diminish input lag.

What do you guys have to say about this?

Your lag is due to the sound card.
You will want to use one that has ASIO capabilities.

I figured that. I guess I'll have to start looking around for a decent card now. Thanks for the confirmation.

You might already know this resource, but: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/

Thanks, I didn't know about that. Also, I found a temporary fix: ASIO4ALL is an "asio" driver for onboard soundcards, and it eliminated my latency. While the sound quality isn't super, it is a temporary fix until I get a better soundcard.

Dammit. I wish I knew about that ASIO driver project!
Also, what sort of computer is this going for? A laptop?

It's a desktop:
Core 2 Duo E6600
2GB RAM
EVGA 680i
8800 GTS

Just a short note: It's not 'real ASIO' but more an ASIO wrapper for the already included KS (kernel streaming) functionality of Windows.
So if you use foobar2k with the KS output plugin and it works for you, then ASIO4All probably adds more overhead. I only wanted to mention this, even if it's not really on-topic and doesn't apply in your case.