Some of you have been trying to help me out and I ereally appreciate it.  Here's where ai AM AT:
 
First problem is I was able to go to device manager to look at firewire - I have "1394 OHCI Compliant Host(legacy)" - so it does not look like I have TI chipset - so it looks like I need to buy a new firewire port.  Yes?
 
In Audio settings I trried changing the driver bit depth from 16 to 24.  No good.  Got the message "Defaulot audio format mnot compatible with one or more sound cards - it has been reset to 44,100 hs (16 bit) as suggested by the driver" - now when I talked to the guyh at Guitar Center ( I know - big mistake) - he said my sound card didn;t really matter since I was gooing to use the presonis - so when I bought the computer I took the integrated sound card.  Am I finding out now that the card really DOES matter and I need a new one???
 
In Audio - changecdx to ASIO - that got it to 24 bit - but constant dropouts on playback - at all three budffer sizes - 128, 256, and 512.
 
In Aduio - changed to WDM/KS -= all buffer sizes - slider all the way  to the right (Safe) - still no luck - still dropouts on playback.
 
Any suggesetions would be GREATLY appreciated.  (anyone want to help me burn down Guitar Center ... just kidding - but it will be a cold day in hell before they get that much of my money again)
 
 

By the way - when I do getr some audio to playback - when I go into console view and pan one track left and another right - does not work - they are both still balanced no matter where I set the pan.  HELP PLEASE

Presonus uses a Dice II FW chipset and if you do not have a TI FW chipset in your pc, your S.O.L

First get a TI chipset and then troubleshoot your drop outs. It could be very well that your issue is the lack of a TI FW chipset.
Cj

By the way - when I do getr some audio to playback - when I go into console view and pan one track left and another right - does not work - they are both still balanced no matter where I set the pan. HELP PLE

Describe your signal chain in detail. (Mono/Stereo tracks, Track interleave. The routing of your tracks to bus and main outs and so on.)
Cj 
 

Yes - once I saw no TI in the dvice manager I knew I would have to look for a new TIFW controller.  Any suggestions on which one?

Will check the signal chain another night - wiped out tonight.

Thanks for the help

The one thing nobody has mentioned that is a SIMPLE first step in troubleshooting this problem would be to make sure that the drivers for the INTERNAL sound card are not being used by Sonar.

Options>Audio>Drivers and make sure that only the drivers for your PreSonus hardware have check marks in front of them. Once you do that, go back to the "General" tab and run the Wave Profiler. That simple procedure has cleaned up many a mess for me.......

BTW, I have run both a PreSonus Firebox, MOTU 828, and Digi MBox2 Pro on my Gigabyte motherboard's onboard Firewire port with no issues, and it doesn't use a TI controller. Now, I know that TI has a reputation for rock solid 1394 implementation, and my add-in card has a TI chipset for this very reason, but I've had good results in other scenarios too.

Thanks for the tip worship - no good though.  Still dropouts.

I don't think you need to piuckup a TI chipset right now.  Here's something to try.  Put the soundcard to WDM and when you are in Sonars Audio Options..........it should the very last page where it gives you the buffer size for 16/44.1 24/44.8 and so on.  That is the number you want to put in all the buffer sizes to start with.  I know this sounds crazy but it worked for me and I use a Tascam.  I actually put in a bigger number in the MIDI Playback buffer because even if you are not working with MIDI in your projects it still links everything together.  Then, you can go lower in all the other buffer areas and I think there are 2 other areas where you can do that.  When I first got this Tascam piece I couldn't get it lower then 14ms but then I discovered these other areas to work with buffer sizes and I am currently working at 5ms on projects.  It's a big difference and yes I know.....its 2ms but it is better then what it was.  Try it out. 

I'm gonna step out on a limb here and go against the grain ... I have tried a bunch of TI chipset firewire cards but I still have absolutely the best reliability and performance using a cheap VIA chipset firewire card with my Presonus gear.  And I have a lot of different presonus gear I use at different locations.  The beta driver for Windows 7 for the FireStudio with dice II works great - lower latency and no issues for me.  I'm not using legacy driver in Windows 7 either.  I've tried all the suggestions and tips and my experience has been very different from what the consensus recommends
 
I'm not saying that the TI chipset cards aren't the way to go --- I'm just saying that buying a TI chipset isn't necessarily going to fix your problem.  VIA chipset are blessed by Presonus as being a good choice and my $15 firewire card performs better (for me with my gear) than any of the more expensive TI cards I've tried. 
 
The thing I've noticed is don't use a built in firewire card - it usually shares something with USB and firewire will suffer whenever you use USB.  Same goes for combo card - get a firewire only card. 

You have the same setup as I, just another firewire card.

This is what I discovered:

#1. Turn off all visual effects in W7

Usually you do the setting to Optimize for Performance.

I'll do that first.

#2. That you have the legacy driver

This does not mean you do not have the TI chipset, and even so might not be so bad anyway.

The default driver in W7 is known to cause problems and those that fixed computer for you might be aware of this. They usually select the legacy driver instead of the chipset default.

For me I got 60% average cpu on one core running the audio on firewire. This whether playing audio at all and even without Sonar running, just the soundcard turned on.

So switching to the legacy driver reduced cpu by 2/3 to 20%.

The going into BIOS and turning off core parking "C-state Tech" disabled reduced cpu by still 2/3 down to 7%.

My machine is a Dell Vostro 430.

There seems to be a lot of overhead running 4500 interrupts per second as it was in my case.

So drivers and intel firmware seems to need updating to run properly with the newest multicore cpu's still.

Anyway these steps made my machine run adn 128 samples ASIO buffer without any crackles or dropouts and about 10% cpu on that core running audio. This does not increase when audio either so it seems to be running 100% transfer to soundcard whether actually any data or not.

On my old pc, P4 2.8GHz XP SP3 the same thing runs at 4% on one logical core(hyperthreading), but with 192 samples ASIO buffer. So W7 really need some updates on drivers for these new multicores. Seems inefficient to use that cpu.

So I wouldn't give up on the firewire chip you've got yet anyway. I ran my test above with the same results with TI and VIA chipset firewire cards. Both cards were PCI Express type.