Thanks for the nice words, John. I don't use the different interfaces at the same time. I use the Line 6 when I'm moving around mixing. I carry it in my AlphaTrack bag case in the little pocket. I mentioned both to say that I had tried to rule out drivers by seeing the problem on 2 different devices. I haven't tried turning off 64 bit audio engine.
I was kinda thinking it might have more to do with background threads in Windows 8. I know that there is some tricky work for the new app model (metro or whatever) where when the apps fall to a back ground thread their behavior changes. I am wondering if this is in play.
Whenever I look at it, it works fine. It's only when I'm multi-tasking that I get the goofy behavior.
I heard once of a guy who wrote a keyboard driver for his boss that only threw in random keys that were near the keys typed when his typing speed went faster than a given keys per minute. I thought this was hysterical. When he slowed down, the problem went away, but when he typed quickly it would screw up. Ha ha. What a great April Fools.
This problem seems kinda like that. Whenever I watch it, no problem. When I get busy and am not paying attention... bang.
I think the best most repeatable test is to Normalize a track during playback... Select a clip, start playback, normalize... any issues?
I'll try repeating using this and with x64 processing on and off.
I have only 24 bit 88.2 audio in the project.
http://stabilitynetwork.blob.core.windows.net/sn-blob/base8.htm Here are non messed up versions of the songs. BTW, if you hear things in my mixes you would do differently, feel free to tell me. I'm always open to suggestions.