SONAR 8.5 Fuzzy distortion

Ok, I know that this has been posted before but I'm having trouble figuring this out. I know I should have a seperate hard drive for my audio, but this isn't an option for me right now.
 
 
The problem is that I'm getting fuzzy distorion on my audio playback. Sometimes it happens after a minute or two, sometimes it takes over a half hour into the playback for it to start. Sometimes it doesn't do it at all! I'm having trouble narrowing this down. I have turned off disk defragging programs, antivirus, firewalls, internet altogether and started up with bare minimum apps running. I have changed absolutely NOTHING on my system and it only started doing this recently. My ASIO latency is all the way up. I've tried adjusting the cache settings, changed driver sharing options, made sure that multicore threading was tweaked.
 
My biggest concern is that this has only started happening within the last couple weeks. Before that it ran perfect all the time. I could record for well over an hour and still have it work great. Please help! I'm dying here! haha!
 
Below is the file sample of my issue. You'll hear the crackling distortion about 9 seconds into it. This clip was taken from 32 minutes into our practice session. It always starts doing it randomly. Once it starts, it doesn'g go away for the rest of the recording.
 
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9131412
 
I'm running this:
 
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
 
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE 3.4Ghz.
4 Gigs Crucial 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM
Palit Nvidia GTS 250 1 Gig GDDR3
M-Audio 1010LT Recording with all 8 inputs at once at 44Khz/16bit
 
There is a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi in the system too that has ALWAYS been there, but I only have ASIO M-Audio drivers running for any audio recording. The only thing the X-Fi is tied to is for games. I've tried to disable it but the problem still persists.

Post removed after more consideration...

The last driver update from M-Audio was 6.0.2_5.10.0.5074 back in Nov 2009. I wonder whether some Win 7 automatic update has had a strange affect - do you have automatic updates ON?

If this only happened a couple of weeks ago set a Restore Point to today and then restore back to some time when you knew things were OK.

You shouldn't have any problem with the Soundblaster left on all the time. Just make sure that you have it unchecked in Sonar.

I don't have a separate drive for audio, it's definitely not a necessity.

Phil

The sound card driver is set at 44.1 and the buffer is at 4096. I keep it high because I thought it had better stability. Latency is not my concern because I don't need to monitor what records through Sonar as I go. The M-Audio 0 latency direct monitoring out to my headphone mixer is perfectly fine.
 
My Sound Blaster is not being used at all in Sonar. I'm running ASIO mode using M-Audio.
 
I don't see how it's a sound card driver issue because I've been using the same up to date M-Audio drivers since I built the computer back in January.
 
Windows Update is set to have me check it before anything installs. There haven't been any new driver installs since my before problem started. Only the usual security fixes Windows blows out every other day.
 
I can't system restore because I have it turned off. I know it's dumb to do that but I always had a weird issue when I try to restore. It won't work so I just turned it off to save the space.
 
I posted some screen shots of my driver settings and Sonar settings.
 
http://i43.tinypic.com/el36zo.jpg
http://i39.tinypic.com/ncnpc1.jpg
http://i39.tinypic.com/dytwrq.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/2eqch3p.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/1zztfgx.jpg
 
Thanks for the help so far!!!!
 
 
 

So what would you suggest? I'm having essentially the exact same problem with a really similar setup. I'm using the ASIO drivers that came with my EMU 0404 USB Audio Interface. But my latency is set at 523. So are my drivers just not working with x64 Win7? They're fully updated. Are there some kind of generic drivers I can use or something?

All these problems being reported by users who keep talking about "buffer sizes"...I hope they understand that there are several different types of buffers...

523 msec latency is way way way too high.

It doesn't say that measurement is in milliseconds.  As he's using ASIO he is probably referring to the reported latency measured in number of samples

It need to be between 1.2mb sec and 20 secs

Actually, a higher latency sample buffer should result in a smoother playback for mixing, mastering or just listening...Obviously, it's not conducive for recording but I don't think it has any bearing on the problems the OP is having.

I listened to the clip. He's got some distortion/overdrive clipping of a sort somewhere in the signal chain. Perhaps it's a "cooling" issue with his soundcard beginning to overheat after a certain length of time. Could be a problem with his mic preamp. But it's not related to latency buffers (unless his computer is completely different than any computer I've ever seen or used)...

CJ,

Have you listened to the clip?

Okay, for s**s & grins, I just loaded a project (two instances of SD2, two NI Elektrik pianos, two acoustic pianos, a bass, two acoustic guitars, two electric guitars, two instances of EWQLSO, and a lead vocal track) after resetting my M-Audio latency sample buffers to 4096...It plays fine...

What the OP is experiencing is some sort of audio distortion...

Roundtrip latency reported at 172.1 msec...

My AP192 won't go above 4096 latency sample buffers...I still contend, after listening to the clip, there's audio distortion somewhere in his signal chain...That's not the kind of noise one hears with latency buffer settings...

CJ,

With all due respect to your supreme post count and knowledge of all things SONAR related, I've been doing this stuff for over 40 years and what I heard in the clip posted is audio distortion...Not digital artifacts...

Ok. I've checked my cables. I can't find anything strange. I don't see how it could be a cable anyway because this fuzz noise happens on ALL of the tracks whenever it decides to do it.  I've tried a bunch of different drivers, whether it be for windows 7, xp or vista, compatibility modes, etc. I've tried changing ASIO buffer sizes from 64 to 4096. I've tried setting the record bitrate and frequency different. I have also changed all my power management in BIOS and Windows to be on all the time.
 
I have uploaded a new copy of the problem here---> http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9140084 
Pardon the language at the end. This is getting on my nerves!
It seems that it comes in around 13 seconds, but then it gets worse and worse, and then all of a sudden it goes completely away at 1:03. Then it comes back again 10 seconds or so later. What the hell?!
 
I really don't want to throw my computer through the basement wall because I just built it this year. But I'm running out of ideas! haha. I have seen this problem on other sites and forums as well. It happens to a lot of people but it always gets left behind unsolved. I am determined to figure this out!!
 
Thank you very much again to anyone who is helping work on this. You have no idea how much it means to me!

It's not clipping because I'm hammering away towards the end and that's when it goes away completely for a short time. I'm not peaking at any point in my signal chain either.

It's not clipping because I'm hammering away towards the end and that's when it goes away completely for a short time. I'm not peaking at any point in my signal chain either.

I have to ask again!
What are your meter readings for the tracks, bus's master bus and main outs.
 
And for heaven sake, you dont have any wireless, web cams or networking enabled in you pc. Even a wireless card that is disabled in the device manager can cause problems.
Cj