I am a DJ who uses both Ableton & Traktor very often. The problem I had was when using my Native Instruments S4 there would be pops & crackling. The sounds associated with having the having the Hz too high and packets too low, which is typically what you do when you want to have the lowest latency possible. Alas, I didn't have my program configured for the lowest latency possible, in fact it was quite to the contrary. Even with the highest latency, and thus, sound card un-intensive settings configured I'd get this annoying problem. (When not using my S4, Traktor behaves perfectly fine. Same with Ableton live. I am able to get the latencies quite low without having this crackling and popping.) While this may be a glitch in the software my guess is that the SoundMax drivers in a place of dire optimization. Would a switch to Hackint0sh fix this?

It will. I shat my self when I found out MBP's use integrated intel HD cards. WTF??!!!?

Due to the fact I have a slightly above integrated intel HD sound card

I would like to thank you Hackint0sh gods for breathing an extra 5 years of life into my T60 tank