#1 – for the new audio engine, I’ve implemented a way to automatically schedule audio events from the game thread to the audio render thread sub-frame. However, this only as accurate as the game thread and is not going to resolve your latency problems.
I have a plan on a design to create an “audio scheduler” component which will allow you to schedule audio events at arbitrary rates and times in the audio render thread. Again, won’t solve the issue of input/output latency.
#2 – learning audio DSP is not too bad if you’re good at Math. If you struggle with math (calculus, linear algebra) it’ll be a bit more tricky to pick up. My background is physics so studying audio DSP has been generally more easy going for me. There’s a number of good books to check out to get you started. If you’re new, I recommend starting with a 2-book text Musimathics (http://www.musimathics.com/). There’s a bunch of other good places to go. Pd is cool to start. Miller Puckette’s free book on DSP/electronic music (http://msp.ucsd.edu/techniques/v0.03/book.pdf) in Pd is a good thing to check out but will probably quickly go over your head unless you’re already familiar with the mathematical foundations.