Doh indeed! lol! I had unchecked one of them earlier but everything was still greyed out. I just unchecked both the input and the output and what do you know.....they are ungreyed now! Thanks everyone! Now if I can get the Focusrite to play audio without dropping out. Stupid firewire! lol!

To stop dropouts open the MixControl software and adjust your latency settings incrementally until the problem stops. This is in the manual. This might however cause delay when tracking.

Cheers.

I have tried that. I am up to a buffer size of 1024. Still having the same issues. I'm hoping to not have latency issue when I record because it is impossible for me to record my guitar that way. I didn't have any issues at all out of my Boss GT-Pro. It was USB. I know that certain Firewire drivers can cause issues. I guess that I'll keep pushing buttons until I find the right combination. Or sell this unit and go buy a USB interface. Thanks again!

You might also find it necessary to track with one latency setting and mix with another. 1024 is high for tracking with any interface.

I'm kind of zonking out for the night but you should list your computer specs so we can see if there is a problem there. That interface is a pretty good one as far as I know. Cheers.

At this time I'm afraid that's what I'll have to do. I'll more than likely get another interface as I shouldn't have to manually change the settings each time.

OK I'll try to list it: Intel i7 860 2.8 ghz processor 16 gb of ram Windows 7 64 bit Let me know if you need other info.

Okay, that's looking good. 

First I'll say you might want to get a hold of Cake tech support for some recommendations. Send them an email with all your system specs and details on what's happening, write down the ticket number then if you are in the US call the toll free number 1-888-CAKEWALK. The reason I say send an email first is because then they have all the info in front of them when you call and give them the ticket number.

That said...

Do you know how fast your hard drives are? If they are mechanical HDDs 7200RPM is optimal. SSD drives are obviously faster though.

Check out a program called DPC Latency checker (has nothing to do with recording latency it checks for resource spikes on youor system). It's free and Cakewalk will likely recommend it.

Have you optimized your system for audio? There are multiple guides out there but Cakewalk has some specific steps for Sonar. Ask them about that.

Also if you are using an ASUS motherboard there are some issues with them shipping out with a bad BIOS set up. There is an update on their site for many of their boards but BE CAREFUL. Sometimes screwing around with that can bork up your system so maybe contact ASUS or whoever made your motherboard if you think this is an issue.

Firewire is best run from a Texas Instrument chipset so if you are running it straight into a motherboard that has an inferior FW chipset a PCI firewire card might be something to consider (but at that point perhaps it would be better to find a USB interface... but it is worth pondering).

Anyway that's all I can think of for now and please talk to tech before you start tinkering with things if you aren't sure about stuff.

In the meantime try to keep your effects usage to a minimum until you are ready to mix. Especially the resource intensive ones. Wherever possible "freeze" you tracks to free up resources while tracking and editing. That should help things moving along a little better. Then when it's time mix and add effects increase the latency buffers. My computer is a powerhouse and I do this anyway.

Good luck.

BTW that Saffire is a nice interface. Probably nicer than mine so swapping it out before checking this type of stuff out might just be waste of time only to have the same issues.

Focusrite is specific with the chipset of the firewire card., usually TI chipset. 

also they are back to the corrext driver with win 7 and NOT the legacy driver for the FW card..

ALSO mix control 3.1 has audio issues, crackle snap pop, stay on 3.0 or 2.4