Dear all,
 
I have a quick question about hard drives, and optimising my PC...
 
Currently, I have 2 internal hardrives - SSD C Drive has my software, the 3.5" 7,200RPM D drive holds my Sonar files and samples for Kontakt, UVI Workstation etc.
 
I sometimes getting a few little crackles and pops when using Kontakt and UVI. The meter showing RAM usage is showing roughly 40 - 60%, so I don't think more RAM would help.
 
I'm wondering, would swapping the 3.5" drive for an SSD make any difference? Or would I just be throwing money down the drain?  
 
Thanks in advance!!

In my experience, crackles and pops have always had more to do with the audio drivers and the interface they are connected to.  For a firewire interface card/chipset, a Texas Instruments based chipset is what I've had the best results with.
 
I very much doubt that an SSD drive would cure your problems. I will say though, that another hard drive added to your system would be beneficial. I currently have an SSD drive for OS and programs, a dedicated drive for samples and a dedicated drive for multi-track audio recording.
 
You can get a 1TB hard drive for around $50. Install it and use it for your multi-track recordings and see what happens. If it doesn't work out, you can always use it as a back-up drive. Of course, if you have money to burn, go ahead and get an SSD.

as Darin says, crackles and pops are more to do with the soundcard and/or its settings.
 
are you running your Onyx 400 on a TI firewire chipset?
are you running in ASIO driver mode?
what are your latency settings?

Thanks for your answers guys... I'll have to check which Firewire card...
 
I am running in asio mode. 48,000 Hz sample rate, 128 samples. Gives me 5.4ms.
 

increasing your hardware sample buffers should decrease your pops/clicks, although with an onyx in ASIO mode, you should be able to run smoothly at that size, so you could have some problems with DPC latency.
 
download, install and run this DPC latency checker.  if you have spikes that will cause crackles/pops.  the problem after that is finding the culprit which is causing the DPC latency.

Thanks Beagle - I'll check that out!