So after a little time... I've got good news and bad news...
The good:
- generally speaking, everything is so much better i'm not having latency related issues, and i'm not getting any crashes in sonar. i'm also just over all way more stable than ever before.
The bad:
- I am STILL having two of the issues I had with the Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 2nd gen! So now of course I'm going to have to start with more troubleshooting (but seriously I have done SO much with the old interface already).
The issues I'm still having, and I'll start a new thread too probably but I figured I'd mention it anyway here, are really boiled down to two things now:
1) Every so often, mostly in regular windows audio like playing an mp3 in media player or a youtube video in chrome, but sometimes in Sonar, I get a glitch, almost like a skip. Sometimes it's fairly constant every 5-10 seconds, sometimes it can be once in a 3 minute video. Sometimes it won't happen for days (although really its almost every day that it happens once or twice).
2) Every so often (again both of these are completely intermittent issues making them hard to troubleshoot)... ALL audio... Whether it's from Sonar or Chrome or Media Player, becomes a garbled distorted mess. To be honest it sounds like it may be slowed down too like 1000x. USUALLY, if I go to Control Panel - Sound, and disable my audio device, hit apply, and then re-enable it, it starts working fine again. Sometimes if that doesn't work I go into the RME control panel and change the sample rate, hit OK, close, open it back up, change the sample rate, hit OK, close... And it's working again. If none of that works, I reboot and it's working agian. This happens also anywhere from a few times in one session to once a week. Totally random.
In January I did a full system format and reinstall, so Windows should be pretty clean. I do have some suspsicions that my video card or its driver could be causing issues... BUT I mean... I just was 100% sure it was the audio interface and replaced that... So I'm not rushing to replace the video card since I was obviously wrong (although I'm glad anyway to now be with a true professional interface).
Anyway, that's my story. Good news is I'm back to work on music finally with much less issues. Bad news... There's still issues haha.