Cakewalk Sonar 7 Producer Edition Help

Hey people who read this :P

I'm brand new to Cakewalk Sonar 7, after switching from the free (and ultimately terrible) Audacity. I'm still getting used to all the controls and such, and have experienced a plethora of problems, many of which I have been unable to fix with other online help. My computer runs Windows 7, with a Realtek High Definition Audio thingy....if you want more information on that....you'll have to tell me where to look. I'm really brand new to this...my first problem is this. Because I made my instrumentals live I had to mix them down into a Wav file, as Cakewalk doesn't recognize nor read Audacity Project files. Thus I've had to import these wav files in order to record vocals over.  When I first set up Producer (with the instructions on the website for Realtek Audio) to my hardware, I was forced to use MME-32 bit as my driver mode, as the Asio selection just ended up telling me that my devices don't support the audio format or something like that and WDM simply doesn't work. I understand that MME-32 must be the absolute worst driver mode to be in with this professional software, but my computer wasn't exactly built for this, and I'm flat out broke which means I can't really buy any new drivers x(. My Audio Driver Bit Depth and my Samply rate match my audio card in the computer (16 drive bit depth and  44100 Hz) but sometimes, when I try and clone a track or add an effect like a compressor to my vocals (or sometimes when I'm trying to record) on playback Cakewalk just refuses to play. It's not an issue of the program somehow muting and me not hearing anything. It's like when I click play or hit spacebar, it'll play for maybe a quarter of a second or less, then stop. No movement nothing. It just wont play. Audio stops on its own, and no matter how many times I hit play or fiddle with my audio options, it just won't happen and I'm forced to start over. Also right now, the problem I have is a dropout message at the bottom of the window. Similar to my previous problem but instead of simply showing the message Audio Stopped, it says Dropout. What does this mean? And how do I fix it? Any help would be greatly appreciated thank you all so much!

My uncle :P I hope that's not illegal...but I got a new key and everything so...hopefully not. Its more like 199 here? 400?? Wow...So I should get Asio drivers? How do I go about doing that/installing that?

As KAlle say's - ASIO drivers are what come with a proper audio interface. Interfaces can be USB, Firewire or PCI sound cards. They start at under $100. It is the most important part of a PC recording system.There are thousands of threads here about Audio interfaces. You are probably the 12,000 person who came here looking for help for this reason.

mcnoyse

Edit:
I got the Asio4all software thingy, version 2.10. Sonar now recognizes my sound hardware and I can now playback. For some reason though, Sonar will not connect to my Realtek Speakers. As in I can play stuff, but I just can't hear them. 

Check your Windows mixer and audio settings. IIRC, there is dropdown in which you can choose outputs.

IIRC = If I Remember Correctly

Did you spend any time looking for it yourself?? :o)
You can get to it clicking the loudspeaker icon on the bottom right of your screen.

The Asio thing magically started to work, and now they are all connected and Cakewalk worked for a few glorious hours without trouble. Now this happened. http://img10.imageshack.u...5543/printscreenlq.jpg I can't play back anything, that screen shot was taken directly after I attempted to play with the spacebar. Clicking the play button results in the same thing. No playback, not even movement. What should I do? It just says audio stopped in the status bar even though I never stopped it. Help meeee this is the best software I've ever gotten and I want it to work :(

If you give use an idea of what you're going to be using your rig for, we might be able to suggest a suitable interface.

Do you intend to record full bands or is it just you?

Any suggestions for good sound cards? Yes they are selected, the Asio thing in Cakewalk says it is connected as well. And I did close all applications, I ran it right after startup, disabling my internet as well as the Antivirus. Must be the sound card.

Sorry, one other thing - what sort of budget is available?

  I'm what I would call a closet musician....as in I don't really plan on going anywhere fancy with it, I just want to make it and have fun while I'm at it and while I'm young. So maybe...the cheaper the better...no real budget and honestly I don't really know how high I would be willing to go...so really as cheap as possible BUT with decent quality. Just throwing it out there maybe up to 300-500 dollars...my USB mic was 200 soo....I think that is fair-ish...

You might want to consider something like this: 

 

It's an external USB interface which provides you with 2 Focusrite pre-amps, Midi IO, a fairly comprehensive set of monitoring options and comes with 4 plugins from their Scarlett range.

Setup is an absolute breeze, the latency isn't super low, like down in the 4ms range, but it's perfectly useable and you get those Focusrite pre-amps which at this price level are difficult to beat.

It's infinitely better than the Realtek.

Can you order online?

Er.....yes