need help with recording hardware
This is involved; theres no quick way to explain what I'm trying to do... I have two big PCs. One is an aging Windows XP unit and the other is a new Windows 7. the Windows 7 has a ton of memory and the sandy bridge i-7 processor, very powerful and fast machine. I do a lot of home recording, a lot of band demos. I use Home Studio 6 and I have the m-audio Delta 10/10LT soundcard, which enables me to record 8 simultaneous live feeds from my Mackie mixer, and one midi. This way I can record a band live, each input to its own track. This was all initially installed on the old XP machine; recording worked well, but when I began to mix the files, I noticed I'd begin to use upwards of 40% CPU and I was plagued with dropouts and pops and clicks... this got progressively worse over time. For this reason, I had the newer Windows 7 machine custom built at a newer shop. They put the delta10/10LT card in it for me. I began to use the audio program and noticed that CPU usage was never more than 10%, a real improvement.... but noticed pops and clicks in the audio right away. Not just SONAR, any kind of audio, playing a simple mp3 file. I went to the m-audio forum and unfortunately noticed page after page of guys complaining about the same situation I have. Its pretty obvious that the delta card is not going to properly work with the i-7 in Windows 7. At this point I'm not sure what I should do. M-audio never wrote a proper windows 7 driver for the delta card and its been discontinued. One friend told me to buy an 8channel audio interface, and a firewire card for it, and hook all that up to the more powerful windows 7 machine, and buy the latest version of SONAR, and ditch the old windows xp machine. Another guy told me that isnt going to work because I use the newer windows 7 machine to do all my graphic design work, the adobe programs, and play intense video games on it as well... he says I need a completely dedicated machine to the audio. Another guy told me wait a year until the audio interfaces are available with USB 3.0. Can anybody give me any decent input? If an audio interface for windows 7 is the way to go, can anyone recommend an affordable one that will accept 8 live feeds from my Mackie mixer? any help would be appreciated. At this point I'm stuck, I'm not doing any recording at all.