I have a Focusrite Saffire 6 USB since 4 years and it has earlier worked fine except for a little too high latency when there is plenty of tracks. Lately I have been using more of the Eastwest Play plugin (Hollywood orch platinum). I get really high latency (512-1024 because of cracks and pops) and the performance is like the notes are "stumbling". If I try to play 16th+ 16th+ a 4th, the result can be randomly like 32th, dotted 16th or vice versa. And the uneven notes remains at playback, which makes the plugin sort of unworkable.
 
So... I have glanced at the old RME Fireface UC that I can get for what I think a fair price. Would an interface like this solve the latency and uneven notes, or is it a common result of EW Play? I don't think the problem is my computer (see tech below), though it is 4-5 years old.

From your specs, it looks like you only have a single drive in your machine? That cannot possibly be right if you are using Hollywood Platinum. Platinum has 24bit audio samples, so if you are recording 16bit, there is some conversion happening that could contribute to latency.
 
If, at this point in your project, you have any non-instrument plugins, disable them and see if that helps. This doesn't sound like something a new interface will fix. It sounds like you are not getting enough throughput streaming the Platinum samples off whatever disk they are on.
 
Regards,
Dan

Thanks for answering, Dan.
I have a SSD only for the samples, it's a 1 Tb Samsung SSD 850 EVO, and streaming from there. SONAR and my Cakewalk projects on the 240Gb main SSD. I have another regular HDD as well, 2 Tb but not in use for SONAR even if I have been thinking of moving the project folder there.
 
I record in 24bit.

So, if all of the Hollywood samples are on an SSD, how many tracks can an instance of Play handle on your machine before you get audio crackles, and are all of these playing concurrently?  Have you disabled all of Play's internal effects?
 
On mine, with a 7200rpm HDD, I can usually use 5-6, but only 4-5 play concurrently. Then, I must open another instance of Play and I can add more tracks there. After about 3 instances of Play, it's time to start bouncing to audio because I can't run any more instances. This is on an i5, mind you, so I can't complain.
 
I will eventually swap in an SSD for these libraries, but I'm sure it won't magically give me the ability to run 16 tracks of samples per Play instance without any issues. I'll be happy if I can go from 5-6 to 8-10...
 
Regards,
Dan
 
 

Another thing, try recording @ 24/96. Your latency will be lower and Play seems to like it better, at least that's the case on my machine.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

dcumpian
Another thing, try recording @ 24/96. Your latency will be lower and Play seems to like it better, at least that's the case on my machine.
 
Regards,
Dan
 

My old Saffire 6 USB only goes up to 48khz. When I changed the default setting for new projects sampling rate in SONAR from 44.1 to 96 the latency showed a decrease from 11ms to 5 ms (512 samples), so that was a great tip if it had worked.

dcumpian
So, if all of the Hollywood samples are on an SSD, how many tracks can an instance of Play handle on your machine before you get audio crackles, and are all of these playing concurrently?  Have you disabled all of Play's internal effects?
 
On mine, with a 7200rpm HDD, I can usually use 5-6, but only 4-5 play concurrently. Then, I must open another instance of Play and I can add more tracks there. After about 3 instances of Play, it's time to start bouncing to audio because I can't run any more instances. This is on an i5, mind you, so I can't complain.
 
I will eventually swap in an SSD for these libraries, but I'm sure it won't magically give me the ability to run 16 tracks of samples per Play instance without any issues. I'll be happy if I can go from 5-6 to 8-10...
 
Regards,
Dan
 

I have a orchestra template that is made of 4 instances of Play, with 5-7 instruments in each instance. If I try to record at 128 samples which is a acceptable latency I got crackles after 2-5 instruments depending on which instruments are in use. If I raise to 256 samples (total roundtrip at 32 ms if that's meaning something) I can play 6+ instruments but the latency is on the border of feeling too slow. When I test-recorded as rythmically as I could at 256 the result is coming a little before the beat, not quantizable when playing 16th for example.

Try freezing some of the instances when you are recording.