Comment by rkagerer

And yes, I know there are newer USB adapters which are supposed to be able be able to help, like FPT (which I may have tried, can't recall), along with playing with ASIO settings. Since the problem was "solved", I never really got far down that rabbit hole. Also wary of getting into troubleshooting/isolating effects of my USB driver/software stacks (that I suspect introduced some unrelated known issues on certain older motherboards), the generation of the USB standard it's plugged into, extra levels of PCIe expanders gating the ports I'm using, contention from competing devices on the same bus, etc. Maybe these are groundless concerns but I figured there may be more variables involved vs. an Ethernet jack that has a comparatively direct hardwired connection to my bus (maybe through 1 expander). I can accept I might just be an old fart who needs to try again on more modern hardware/stacks.