Anderton

Etostone
Even if I can't simultaneously play audio while in Sonar and rest of windows media...

Did you try what I suggested earlier? Works every time for me, no matter how many Windows programs I open along with SONAR. Maybe disabling system sounds is one reason for success with my system? Also, if following what I did, it's important for SONAR not to share drivers. 

Anderton , yes I did it . Still there. 
I believe you are running things with Windows 7 not 8.1 pro 64 .  So It's very different configuration. 
As mentioned the new drivers made US 4x4  run in a decent level in my windows. Still there are all these problems. Now Larry comes to positive confirm about the distortion taking place from nowhere . It happens to me even by just playing media files in media player and browsing on my Chrome . I gave full report in my message above. 
I hope Tascam fix those in the near future. 

lludwick

Etostone
 
2) I hear strange audio degrade distortion sounds coming from us 4x4 , or even 0.5 sec audio gaps , after I continuously play music on media player and running my internet browser Chrome , surfing on the net , playing youtube videos , or playing music with windows media player, for about 2 hours.  Those are not pops or clicks. Those are waves of distortion , distorting the whole audio signal for a few seconds , sometimes around 10 secs. 
When this distortion happens , sometimes goes away by it self , or I have to stop playing any audio wait 10 seconds and play again , or worse scenario I need to turn off and on the Tascam rack interface.  

 
I have seen this distortion on the 4x4. Out of nowhere it distorts and then after a number of seconds it stops distorting. Strangely I think it is only distorting in the output monitoring (in my case headphones). This is because I was recording the stereo output through 3/4. I was playing a midi track previously recorded through my keyboard and recording the synth output to an audio track. During the record I heard the distortion for about 8 seconds in my headphones. Playing back the audio track, it was crystal clear and therefore the distortion for me was only through my headphones.
 
Another problem I had yesterday was with distortion. I was playing my synth with the pot on the synth set a bit higher than I am used to using. The pots on the 3/4 were a bit lower than usual and there was no distortion lights flashing on the 4x4, but it sounded terrible and it would not go away. I lowered my synth pot and raised the 3/4 pots which cleared up the distortion immediately. It is strange that the 4x4 would let the distortion come through without squawking about the level it was receiving from the synth (as in the flashing red lights I would expect). This would never happen on my old Tascam interface.
 
Also, I left the 4x4 on for a few hours while I did something else. When I came back the 4x4 was off although still plugged in. I removed the power wart and plugged it back in but still no lights. Finally I disconnected the USB, plugged the USB back and then plugged in the power and all worked fine again. Scary stuff for me having switched over from my old flawless Tascam unit although the new 4x4 has great sound especially for my mikes which sound much clearer and airy now.

Larry I am glad you are facing the same issues with me. I believe it's a driver or firmware problem. 
Since I can't reach Tascam by Email (faulty Tascam servers), I hope Tom from Tascam is still reading the forums here and confirm those bugs as well. 
 

lludwick
Another problem I had yesterday was with distortion. I was playing my synth with the pot on the synth set a bit higher than I am used to using. The pots on the 3/4 were a bit lower than usual and there was no distortion lights flashing on the 4x4, but it sounded terrible and it would not go away. I lowered my synth pot and raised the 3/4 pots which cleared up the distortion immediately. It is strange that the 4x4 would let the distortion come through without squawking about the level it was receiving from the synth (as in the flashing red lights I would expect). This would never happen on my old Tascam interface.

 
I've tested the preamps on the TASCAM, and the overload indicators acted reliably. Are you sure the gain-staging within the synth was correct, given that its level was higher than usual?
 

Also, I left the 4x4 on for a few hours while I did something else. When I came back the 4x4 was off although still plugged in.

Do you have the power-saving mode enabled?

TomDuffy
V1.02 of the Windows driver is ready to go.   For the adventurous, it can be downloaded now from the tascam.jp site, but we should have it up on ours later today.
 
I'm looking into the automated email issue.
 
Tom.

Tom , I also added a 4) sentence to my previous message about my report for your new update . 
Here it is again. 
4) Strange behavior :  With the new update 1.02 , Sonar in few projects that worked fine with 1.01 ,  don't work properly to 512 samples buffer size , or 128 . Whatever is different from 256 samples buffer .However exporting the tracks is working fine . I am still investigating this one, just came up today while I was playing with the buffer size. I will update about this in few days. 
 
 

Cactus Music
Could you try a loop back test, I'm curious about the new TAscam drivers.
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Lets-all-TEST-our-Interface-driver-for-offset-m3178396.aspx
 
 

I would love to help. But somehow I never did such tests to my soundcards. if I find sometime I will post it on your post page.  

Anderton

lludwick
Another problem I had yesterday was with distortion. I was playing my synth with the pot on the synth set a bit higher than I am used to using. The pots on the 3/4 were a bit lower than usual and there was no distortion lights flashing on the 4x4, but it sounded terrible and it would not go away. I lowered my synth pot and raised the 3/4 pots which cleared up the distortion immediately. It is strange that the 4x4 would let the distortion come through without squawking about the level it was receiving from the synth (as in the flashing red lights I would expect). This would never happen on my old Tascam interface.

 
I've tested the preamps on the TASCAM, and the overload indicators acted reliably. Are you sure the gain-staging within the synth was correct, given that its level was higher than usual?
 

Also, I left the 4x4 on for a few hours while I did something else. When I came back the 4x4 was off although still plugged in.

Do you have the power-saving mode enabled?

I was hearing the distortion, but seeing no indication of any problem on the 4x4 in the sense that the warning lights did not flash red as you would expect. I wondered if it was my synth so I connected my headphones to the synth and heard the distortion directly from the keyboard. I discovered I had accidently raised the level on the synth into distortion range. The problem is the 4x4 did not flash red as it normally would if I was passing too high a signal.
 
On the synth I did drop the level to avoid the distortion from the synth. At that point I had to raise the levels on the 4x4 to get reasonable signal through to Sonar. At that point, if I smashed the keys on the synth the 4x4 would flash the distortion lights appropriately.
 
Maybe I just don't comprehend what I am doing correctly by thinking that hearing distortion from the synth should also be detected by the 4x4 electronics. On my old Tascam unit, it certainly would have indicated the problem because I have done that in the past enough times. For me this is not a problem because knowing how to solve the problem with settings just forces me to be more careful in the future about my synth and 4x4 settings.
 
I don't have power-saving mode enabled unless of course it is a default. I am not one to use the interface for most things other than recording. Therefore when I finish a Sonar session, I normally disconnect the USB and then the power from the interface. The fact that I had left it on was an oversight, but it did give me concern when the 4x4 would not wake up. I now know how to wake it up though so for me it is another area of unconcern.

lludwick
 
I was hearing the distortion, but seeing no indication of any problem on the 4x4 in the sense that the warning lights did not flash red as you would expect. I wondered if it was my synth so I connected my headphones to the synth and heard the distortion directly from the keyboard. I discovered I had accidently raised the level on the synth into distortion range. The problem is the 4x4 did not flash red as it normally would if I was passing too high a signal.

 
The warning lights don't indicate distortion, they indicate level. So if you feed in a distorted signal that is below the maximum level the 4x4 can handle without distortion, it will not register distortion - it will simply reproduce the distorted signal faithfully.
 
Remember that once a signal goes into distortion, it "flat-tops" and will not produce any more level, just more distortion. So if the 4x4 was set to accommodate the maximum headroom the keyboard could handle, it would accommodate the maximum amount of headroom with a distorted signal. The only way the 4x4 would indicate distortion is if you exceeded the 4x4's headroom. The synth's headroom has nothing to do with that.
 

I don't have power-saving mode enabled unless of course it is a default. I am not one to use the interface for most things other than recording. Therefore when I finish a Sonar session, I normally disconnect the USB and then the power from the interface. The fact that I had left it on was an oversight, but it did give me concern when the 4x4 would not wake up.

Go into Control Panel and double-click on the 4x4 driver to open it. You'll see whether the power-saving mode is enabled or not. I think it might be the default, I turned it off a long time ago so I don't remember if it changed with the software revs. It could also be the USB ports shutting down, as mentioned above.

I believe I found one the reasons of  the distortion/degraded audio I face so far. Whenever audio is played from any player , usually media player, and I surf on the internet , if a page loads up and new photos or graphics come on that page , the audio usually getting distorted and it keeps being distorted until I stop playing the audio . Then I have to wait from 4 - 10 seconds and start to play normal audio , undistorted / undegraded. 

Etostone
I believe I found one the reasons of  the distortion/degraded audio I face so far. Whenever audio is played from any player , usually media player, and I surf on the internet , if a page loads up and new photos or graphics come on that page , the audio usually getting distorted and it keeps being distorted until I stop playing the audio . Then I have to wait from 4 - 10 seconds and start to play normal audio , undistorted / undegraded. 

I wonder if all that activity stresses out the computer sufficiently that the latency setting becomes too low temporarily. As an experiment, try setting the latency to the highest "notch" possible and see if this still happens.

Why I would never, ever use my DAW as an internet surfing computer. To me that is bad practice and asking for issues. Computers are cheap. Having my DAW screw up because I'm using it on line? 
I need my DAW,,  and if spending $300 on a second computer makes my DAW run smoothly and safe from unwanted intrusions, that is money well spent. 
I actually have been recycling my old DAW's into my office computers so they don't end up costing me much extra.