This forum doesn't like Firefox so if you want automatic line breaks you have to use IE, Chrome or Opera. Cheers.

I read the Sweetwater article and disabled everything and I am still getting the "spikes" in the Latency checker and the error message that I some driver is "bad". I didn't do anything to the BIOS however, as that's not something I know about. There is obviously something going on with this laptop that is affecting the latency. I haven't a clue what to try next!

You should really send Cake tech support an email at the very least. It might take them a while to get back to you though which is why giving them a call is better. I'm in Canada so it's long distance for me as well but they didn't keep me on hold for very long and because I sent them an email before hand with all the info I could think of it was a rather quick call. Then they emailed me the info I needed. 

The phone call is kind of more to give them a kick in the rump to reply more than anything.

And don't be too afraid of the BIOS. I mean you can screws things up if you're not careful but it's good for any computer user looking to become a little more advanced in their knowledge to at least go in and look around at what the BIOS is and does. When making changes to the BIOS you have to actually confirm the changes before they take place so you aren't gonna screw antyhing up just going in to take a look. Also try to find the manual for the laptop online somewhere. It'll should give you a rundown of how to fiddle around in the BIOS.

That said... are you still having actual problems while recording now? If things are working that's all that matters even if you still are getting the odd spike.

Cheers.

PS:  Send them the results of the DPC Latency Checker read out for them to interpret as well as any other info you can think of. They'll hook you up. 

@Percepto

I sent you a couple of PM replies - I am available per your schedule.

Bob Bone

I tried to send tech support a message but keep getting an error message that "The internet is broken, at least on our side" very droll Cakewalk, thanks for that. I can't record anything at the moment, I really don't care if there are a million red spikes in the latency checker or if my latency figure is too high, it's real world situations that count. It just stutters and the audio keeps cutting out just from triggering true pianos from my control keyboard with nothing else running! Our tech guy was here for a couple of hours today and we are doing a new install on another machine as a test before we take the next step. No point changing settings and messing with the bios if the cause is simply the protocols and services which are running (it's a company laptop) in the background. I should have more to report tomorrow, but for now, I've definitely lost my mojo! Cheers

Just a quick question:  Are you having the clicks and pops only on Loops or on all audio?

The reason I ask is that I've experienced a similar click-and-pop problem with loops and found that by putting a very short fast fade-in (maybe 1 or 2 samples in length) at the very beginning of the loop and a short fast fade-out on the end of the loop cleaned up the problems I was experiencing.  Seems the problem is related to clipping a waveform at a point that was not next-to-silent would cause this and have just gotten myself into the habit of putting in the fades.  I don't know if this is a "normal" procedure or not, just my solution.

Best,
guitardood

Thanks but it's a deeper problem than that. As I said, I can't even play my control keyboard with 1 sound without the audio cutting out. Pops and clicks on non-zero crossings are to be expected and this solution is fine. Cheers anyway.

So, here is the current situation. Tried installing Sonar and my soundcard on a completely "clean" machine. Lenovo Thinkpad T400,Dual core P8700 @2.53 GHz, 4gb Ram. Everything worked perfectly @ 48k, 24 bit. Latency Checker reported no issues and I had no dropouts or issues. I tried exactly the same thing with the Loop Constructor with wild extremes of left and right panning, velocity and pitches. Not a pop or a click to be heard! I also even wrote the basis of a song (surprised myself!) with 10 tracks of vocals, 4 loops and 6 midi channels. Some effects also and bus routing, and again, not even a minor hiccup. So, no issue with Sonar and the RME, we now know it's an issue with my laptop, which is potentially a far superior one than the one I just did the test on. Next step is to strip my machine to it's bare minimum and we'll go from there. Thank you for all the input and help, I will hopefully post a successful outcome soon.

Will be interested to hear how this pans out- thanks for the update percepto

So, here is the current situation. Tried installing Sonar and my soundcard on a completely "clean" machine. Lenovo Thinkpad T400,Dual core P8700 @2.53 GHz, 4gb Ram. Everything worked perfectly @ 48k, 24 bit. Latency Checker reported no issues and I had no dropouts or issues. I tried exactly the same thing with the Loop Constructor with wild extremes of left and right panning, velocity and pitches. Not a pop or a click to be heard! I also even wrote the basis of a song (surprised myself!) with 10 tracks of vocals, 4 loops and 6 midi channels. Some effects also and bus routing, and again, not even a minor hiccup. So, no issue with Sonar and the RME, we now know it's an issue with my laptop, which is potentially a far superior one than the one I just did the test on. Next step is to strip my machine to it's bare minimum and we'll go from there. Thank you for all the input and help, I will hopefully post a successful outcome soon.