behind the curve

hi all, I have been using SONAR7 pro for a while, but a recent comp failure forced me to buy a Gateway with intel I5, 4G ram, nice machine but with a stock onboard audio realtek hd stereo, W7 home premium OS. This comp is much better than my old one in some ways, but performance of Sonar is very bad, kliks, pops, latency out the ears. Can someone tell me why a better computer delivers worse performance? Do I need a sound card to replace the budget onboard chips? The same files that suck in Sonar sound very good in Sound Forge 9 on the same machine. I would upgrade to X1 if that would cure my problem. My question is 'Is S7 pro very obsolete?'

Pops and clicks is a common complaint in Windows 7, with Integrated Audio systems, separate sound cards and even with recording interfaces. 

Unfortunately there is no "one fix" for the problem.  On the Windows 7 forum, audio section, there are hundreds of posts about the problem, from people with laptops, with name brand desktops and from home built systems.

A couple of things to do.  1. update the Video drivers and also update the sound drivers with the Gateway supplied sound driver (do not use a non-Gateway sound driver or let Windows install the generic "HD Audio Codec" driver).  2.  Sound is a low priority item in Windows and is on a shared Interrupt (IRQ) with a higher priority device.  Go to the Device Manager, RIGHT click on the entry for the sound device then LEFT clcik "uninstall" - DO NOT click the box to uninstall the drivers.  Then restart the PC and when Windows starts it will detect and reinstall the sound.  Sometimes it will put it on a different shared IRQ and help or fix the problem.

Wireless (Wi Fi) can also cause this problem. 

You can try some "tuning" to help with latency and PC operation for recording.  Focusrite has some good tips on optimizing a Win 7 PC for DAW operation.  http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/en/article.php?id=1071