Greyed Out Input and Output Drivers using Focusrite Saffire Pro 24

Guessing this is an ASIO issue. Did you disable you internal sound card in SONAR?

What is Edit > Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording | Driver Mode: set to? Are there any inputs and outputs available from any device?

Yes. They are labeled Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver. The input says Microphone (Saffire Audio) 1. The output says Speakers (Saffire Audio) 1. I try using these but have not had good performance. There are 8 greyed out inputs and 4 greyed out outputs.

Doh... are there checkmarks beside those other devices? If so uncheck them and the Saffire stuff should become available.

I don't have switches for outputs or recording on the front of my Focusrite. I only have the monitor volume, headphone volume and 2 gain controls for the 2 front inputs. Unfortunately I can't check anything in input/output in Sonar. They are all greyed out. Thanks for the help though.

To stop dropouts open the MixControl software and adjust your latency settings incrementally until the problem stops. This is in the manual. This might however cause delay when tracking.

Cheers.

You might also find it necessary to track with one latency setting and mix with another. 1024 is high for tracking with any interface.

At this time I'm afraid that's what I'll have to do. I'll more than likely get another interface as I shouldn't have to manually change the settings each time.

Okay, that's looking good. 

First I'll say you might want to get a hold of Cake tech support for some recommendations. Send them an email with all your system specs and details on what's happening, write down the ticket number then if you are in the US call the toll free number 1-888-CAKEWALK. The reason I say send an email first is because then they have all the info in front of them when you call and give them the ticket number.

That said...

Do you know how fast your hard drives are? If they are mechanical HDDs 7200RPM is optimal. SSD drives are obviously faster though.

Check out a program called DPC Latency checker (has nothing to do with recording latency it checks for resource spikes on youor system). It's free and Cakewalk will likely recommend it.

Have you optimized your system for audio? There are multiple guides out there but Cakewalk has some specific steps for Sonar. Ask them about that.

Also if you are using an ASUS motherboard there are some issues with them shipping out with a bad BIOS set up. There is an update on their site for many of their boards but BE CAREFUL. Sometimes screwing around with that can bork up your system so maybe contact ASUS or whoever made your motherboard if you think this is an issue.

Firewire is best run from a Texas Instrument chipset so if you are running it straight into a motherboard that has an inferior FW chipset a PCI firewire card might be something to consider (but at that point perhaps it would be better to find a USB interface... but it is worth pondering).

Anyway that's all I can think of for now and please talk to tech before you start tinkering with things if you aren't sure about stuff.

In the meantime try to keep your effects usage to a minimum until you are ready to mix. Especially the resource intensive ones. Wherever possible "freeze" you tracks to free up resources while tracking and editing. That should help things moving along a little better. Then when it's time mix and add effects increase the latency buffers. My computer is a powerhouse and I do this anyway.

Good luck.

Focusrite is specific with the chipset of the firewire card., usually TI chipset. 

also they are back to the corrext driver with win 7 and NOT the legacy driver for the FW card..

ALSO mix control 3.1 has audio issues, crackle snap pop, stay on 3.0 or 2.4

Thanks again for all of the info. I will take it step by step and see what happens. An e-mail to tech support may be in my future. :-) I'm thinking that it may be the firewire driver as that seems to be a common problem when someone has issues with this particular Focusrite unit. Maybe I'll get a Focusrite with a USB. I really like their preamps.

I just wanted to follow up with what I've found in my adventures. The DPC Latency Checker is a wonderful tool. I found that my network adapter was causing some grief with my audio. I disabled it and have only noticed one little "pop" in my audio since then. Other than that I haven't had any issues. I'm going to continue testing by putting a load on the computer and enabling and disabling devices. I haven't tried recording just yet. Thanks again for all of the input. I will post back here again with any positive or negative results that I find in the hopes that it may help someone else.

Happy New Year, Matt. No problem. You guys have been good to me and you make good products. You deserve the business. Cheers.

A few years ago, with my prior DAW PC, I had the same problem, and like you, used DPC latency checker to narrow it down to the network adapter driver. As soon as I disabled the driver the problem went away. As at least one post previously stated, I would recommend against getting rid of the Focusrite device unless you have no other choice. IMHO it truly is one of the best interfaces out there in that price range. I have the DSP version which is esentially the same thing except for the addition of the internal DSP chip and an extra headphone out and it has always worked very well for me. Not to mention, the Saffire MixControl software provides amazing monitoring/routing capabilities. I have it plugged in to a SIIG FW400 card with the TI chipset and it works flawlessly.
 
Hand in there, it sounds like you're on the right track.
 
JTW