Clicking/Popping/Latency Issue. Help Appreciated

Welcome to the forum. Your system specs look okay. PCI can cause problems but I think PCIe stuff is okay. The hardrive being full may cause issues but I'm not sure. Maybe it doesn't have enough space for virtual memory tasks (if that even applies in modern systems) but I'd try to clean up that drive or get a secondary storage drive. Also try this optimization guide from Sweetwater (Warning: PDF file) http://www.sweetwater.com...Optimization_Guide.pdf I did all of that and it made my system cooperate a lot better with my old interface but DON'T do the "Change Processor Scheduling" part as Sonar apparently needs those settings for some reason. Good luck.

I recommend doing Ctrl+Alt+Del to open Task Manager.  Go to the Performance Tab.  Click Task Manager so its window is on top of Sonar.  Watch your memory and CPU usage as the project plays.

In my case, only 4.5 GBs of my 12 GB memory is  ever needed even though I have a ton of soft synths going.  For me memory is not the issue.

The CPU hits 100% or close to it often if I have too many soft synths OR if I am running Hollywood Strings.

Solutions:
• Freeze your soft snyths
• Avoid using the reverb in the soft synth itself if possible.  It is more efficient to set up a reverb bus with a separate reverb like Lexicon.

When I freeze Hollywood, my CPU goes from 100% to 15%.  On projects with lots of soft synths, usually freezing one or two, or using a reverb outside the soft synth resolves the issue.

You may not have Hollywood, of course, but the point is that some virtual instruments are huge processor hogs.

I tried the buffer thing but there are pros and cons to moving it either direction and I did not find that to be helpful.

I have an i7 running in 64-bit with 12 GBs memory.  Running Sonar X1 in 64-bit.
 
A little off topic, but for those considering Vienna Symphonic versus Hollywood, Vienna uses only a fraction of the computing power that Hollywood demands.  It loads way faster and is easier to use.  I have both and love both and there are advantages to both; but from a resource perspective, VSL is a much leaner design.

I'm not sure how you would go about it because my motherboard has a MemOk feature I can use but since I built the system I made sure I put the RAM into the correct slots right off the bat. Someone else smarter than I should be able to explain further. Another thing you should look at is making sure you have the latest drivers for EVERYTHING. Like all of your computer parts but especially your interface and MIDI devices. That can cause quite a few problems. Just a note, I'm a beginner myself but I've been plowing through all these pitfalls over the past month and finally got everything working properly. It is however quite possible the PCIe card IS causing a problem. I had to get a USB 2.0 interface because my Echo PCI device was not cooperating with my motherboard. I did manage to get it working after optimizing the system and adjusting my buffer but I wanted something newer anyway. PCIe is more modern though so it works far better on new motherboards. There are quite a few threads on here about the PCI issue.

Listen to CJay... he's smart.

Hi,
I agree your issue is not likely hardware related and could be driver related.  You may want to try DPC Latency Checker (it's free):  http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml  , this will let you know which of your drivers are introducing latency.  

If this doesn't outline any issues, check your project - do you have any latency-intensive plugins in your project?  You can easily disable all plugins for the project and see if the issue continues to rule this out.  

One other point regarding your hard drive - playing / recording audio is highly I/O intensive.  I'm not suggesting your hard drive filling up is causing your issue, however it's likely not going to help either.  I assume your drive is 7500rpm or faster (correct?) and be sure it's defragmented.  Also, if you're using lots of audio samples while playing / recording in Sonar, you should consider splitting those out to a separate hard drive, as that can cause bottlenecks as well.  You can check to see  disk I/O activity in task manager as well to get a feel for this.

Given you said you've optimized the PC per sweetwater's instructions, I'll assume you've already disabled WLAN, virus scanning, firewalls, etc. however let me know if that's not accurate.

Hope this helps.
Russ