grizwalter
First off, thanks a million, everyone, for all the help and answers/suggestions. This is truly eye-opening. What a fantastic forum. Hope I can pay it forward sometime!
 
Basically, it seems that the CPU, after all this, is still the most likely culprit. While the RAM functionality may be slowed down somewhat due to odd-matching, since RAM doesn't seem to have anything to do with this (using only 2.6 Gb tops in X3 no matter how much the audio drops out), there's no point in worrying too much about that. Wish I'd talked to you folks before I got more RAM, although, admittedly, 3 Gb was pretty pathetic anyway, and rather embarrassing to admit. lol
 
guigz2000, thanks for the additional info and link. I'll take a look at that. But either way, I'm 90% likely going to upgrade now. The info I have on my current Motherboard and CPU are as follows:
 
Manufacturer: ECS
Name: MCP61PM-HM
I have a second motherboard name which is labeled "HP/Compaq motherboard name," and that says "Nettle2-GL8E." I suppose that's just the name they give it for their computer package.
 
Current CPU: Athlon 64 X2 (B) 5000+ 2.6 GHz (65W)
 
Is that the correct info to figure out what new CPU will work? 

Ok, it seems that your mainboard will not accept bigger processor.It's an AM2 socket (AM2+ would have been better). An AMD phenom 1 X4 should work but there's no way to guarantee that without testing.
 
A better solution may be to get a new processor/mainboard. AMD one are very cheap and they work well (you won't get performances that great, but it definitely will be better than what you currently have). The cheapest Mainboard+Processor should be something like 110 euros and for the price, you should be able to get a 4 core 3.2GHz, with upgrade possibilities. Just check the memory type.
 
Nitenite

bandso
You may want to go into each tracks prochannel and delete the ones that you are using. That seemed to open up some resources under the hood for a project that I was working on. I was having major dropouts on a project with 40 tracks or so until I did this.

That's a very good idea! Thanks for the suggestion. I'll definitely give it a try!

It's really a complex equation of things to come up with "what will fix the problem".  It seems that the two things possibly at issue here are the sound card/driver and/or the CPU.  USB devices "tend to" use more resources than some other things, so a great driver is really needed, especially if you are doing a lot with a bunch of channels at once, but if you are at the mix part of things and are just using the stereo out of that card, it would seem ok from the data throughput perspective.  That doesn't rule it out as the issue, however, especially since you are running a bunch of tracks with a bunch of plugs at 96k.  The 96k part CAN be helpful from a low latency achievable point of view, but not necessarily for overall performance at high load.  That's a lot of bits/bytes to push around.
 
The CPU is certainly suspect as well - and you know your options there.  Unfortunately, a motherboard/CPU replacement is a non-trivial upgrade.  Sure, it's easy enough to snap it all together, but to really do it right, you would have to rebuild the OS/apps/etc since the motherboard has some many functions - busses, cpu, memory, etc.  It would probably "work" if you just swapped it out once Windows figured it out, but it would be less than optimal and you may lose whatever gains you were hoping to get in the process.  It's better than it used to be under earlier versions of Windows, but I still wouldn't recommend doing it that way.
 
You said you have had other similar projects work, right?  Is it at all possible that there is just something wrong with the project or some plugin that's loading or something?  I've had projects that misbehaved with what seemed to be a lower requirement than other tunes that were absolutely more complex from all perspectives and determined that there was just something wrong.  It isn't easy to find or really to fix, but in the end, it was the only way I was able to complete the song: export the tracks, bring them into a new project and start adding everything back in one at a time.  Is there a "breaking point"?  can you "archive" (as in mute/solo/archive) some of the tracks a bit at a time and see if something drastically reduces the issues/cpu usage/whatever?
 
Hope this helps in some way.

Sorry if my post wasn't entirly clear. I believe that you are correct that you cannot delete the entire prochannel, just the modules inside (and the EQ is locked as far as I can tell). Removing the unused modules did seem to help my CPU meter usage drop even if the modules were off.

Yeah metteus and bandso. You are both very likely correct. Seems that it is probably like the difference in Archiving and Muting. You mute a track, it still has to be ready to pop it on in a microsecond, so the system is still doing the reading processing or whatever. Archive the same track and you can't do a thing with it until playback is stopped.
 
Makes sense the same would apply to a ProChannel. I wonder though if they couldn't patch it all up so the EQ could be removed as well, or an actual "archiving" of sorts of the entire ProChannel. As long as anything lives in it, the system has to be ready for it to engage, thus system resources are at play. 

Kev999

grizwalter
...running three 2 Gb modules only at that point. No change whatsoever...

Are they a matched set, i.e. are all three sticks identical?  If not then I would suggest sticking with a matched pair of 2GB sticks.  Most motherboards require RAM to be used in pairs anyway and are fussy about which combinations of slots are used.

Yes sir they are.

Another option is to use the Freeze button (In theory it should freeze all plugins, so Prochannel effects "should" be freezed.Haven't tested).It's better than to remove plugins since it won't affect sound. A freezed track will just be raw audio...

Also have you done any tweaking in Bios, turning off the "speed step" and "virtual tech" stuff?
 

Bristol_Jonesey
One thing I haven't seen addressed in this thread are your hard drives.
 
How many, what size & type are you running and what % capacity is used/free on them?
 
A deficiency in this area can also be a possible source of frustration/instability/bottlenecks.

Yep...I asked if he has a dedicated HDD for sessions. No answer yet. His mainboard is quite old and has first gen SATA. Getting a dedicated SATA HDD (if none available) is definitely a way to enhance streaming. Try not to use the PATA (IDE) connector for sessions HDD. SATA has speedier.

guigz2000
Another option is to use the Freeze button (In theory it should freeze all plugins, so Prochannel effects "should" be freezed.Haven't tested).It's better than to remove plugins since it won't affect sound. A freezed track will just be raw audio...

 
You know, that's exactly what I've been doing, and it has worked well. Usually it is a bit of a pain, since in the mixing process it means unfreezing and refreezing often, but since I usually begin and end a mix with drums in one way or another, freezing the 8 - 13 tracks of those usually does the trick.
 
With that said, I have encountered a situation when freezing tracks actually amplified this problem! I've never figured out what was up with that. I'd posted here about it and got all sorts of different possible answers, but not a one of them made too much sense. I do recall that one person suggested that freezing a track writes everything to the hard drive (just like a track mixdown basically), but that means transfer of more data to and from the drive so can, in some cases, depending on what is causing the hang-ups, make things worse when dealing only with audio tracks. Frankly, I'm not sure I fully understand that line of thinking, but just thought I'd mention it here.

Sir Les
Also have you done any tweaking in Bios, turning off the "speed step" and "virtual tech" stuff?

That would have to be a definitive "no!" lol  Any instructions on that are welcomed, but I'm no guru and would hate to go from staggering to wheelchair.

Sir Les
I also agree that the cpu may be the suspected culpret..So..reduce the IRQ calling or polling, by reducing redundant devices first in BIOS...not in control panel...As I believe if you turn things off in control panel the drivers are still loaded up for the devices not being used, which can cause conflicts with other drivers being used.?..(perhaps even a virtual IRQ is tagged and held?)
So removal of those devices by turning off the devices IN THE BIOS, removes them drivers from the driver list in WIN and they do not show up in control panel at all....(windows will poll the list continually to see if any changes occur.)...just another processes one does not want happening when recording or doing playback in DAWs.
 
Next step is to turn off apps and background services which are not necessary to run while doing recording or playback of audio.
That task is system specific...also remove things from the start up /msconfig, that boot up with win that are not necessary.
 
Making your system exclusive for the task at hand, may calm down the interference.

 
Sir Les, I don't think going into my bios each time I want to disable modules in ProChannels would be even remotely practical. In fact, it would be downright impossible. You must mean something else?

An external USB2 (I have no experience with USB3) drive will not provide the same advantage. Also this assumes you are not using SSDs becuase the primary advantage to a multi-HD setup is more arms and platters, the physical stuff that makes HDs work. The reason a USB2 drive will not provide much help is the performance of the USB2 connection.

That just adds fuel to the fire for this thread.