Why would re-installing Windows fix the problem?

How many audio tracks do you have? Are you using lots of plug-ins/effects?

If you can bump up the milliseconds to a point where the snap, crackle and pop stops, that could mean that you have too much going on.
If so, you may want to freeze or mix down some of the tracks to release some of the pressure off of your CPU.

The only alternative would be to increase your processing power.

thanks

Ive got 2 1G hard drives, AMD 3200+ processor. I was running 1 vocal and 1 guitar track when this thing started to occur. Izotope plugin just crapped itself. I analyzed my computer and it said to defrag it so i did but still no solution.

This is why i want to re-install windows. I believe the problem started occuring when i upgraded to SX 3.12

2 1 gb hd's? theres no way....thats less than an ipod nano.... do you mean ram sticks? and the processor is ok, but not the best for hard work. i have the 3500, which is better, but if you want to and can, get something like the dual core AMD X2's. that'd be atleast a $500 upgrade though, plus a new motherboard.

Is that (2) 1gig hard drives? Gotta be a typo, right?

With only 2 tracks you shouln't be having any problems at all. Are you using the ASIO drivers for the RME?

Try completely removing the plug-in from the project and see if there is a difference. If so, it could be the plug-in.

There has been problems with certain vst plugins and cubase, though there are some plugins that just use up horrendous amounts of cpu power. I'm assuming you're using the effects as sends whenever you can and not just running all your effects as inserts. Re. the weirdness with certain plugins: there is a vst "fix" out there which seems to tame the problem. Do a search at cubase.com. It may have something to do with dc offset though, I'm not entirely sure and may be talking out of my butthole right now. I used cubase for quite a while but have since dumped it. Too many issues. (yes my software was legit. Dongle and all.) I just found there are so many bugs due to the copy protection. Having a dongle really makes things complicated. In a way, I think this is where Protools has it right. Tieing their software to proprietary hardware saves them some headaches in regards to copy protection.

$ .02

so what did you change??? any way to roll back his preferences??? could that help??

Doing a rollback should be easy enough. Just go to the uninstall menu in the Windows add/remove programs list in settings/control panel.

I sure hope he isn't trying to record to the same drive that Cubase is on.

Izotope Ozone can be very power hungry though.

Make sure you have the latest firmware and driver from RME.

Make sure you go to http://www.musicxp.net to verify your machine is optimized for audio.

48ms latency with FF800? Something seems funky. Do you have the DDS turned on in the Fireface settings? Also make sure your Firewire card is not sharing its IRQ with anything else. I'd reinstall Cubase before I'd reinstall the OS.

While I have used SX3 with my FF800 with ok results, since buying Samp Pro I haven't touched it. I'm in DAW heaven now.

I would guess the problem is that you harddrive is running in pio mode. Check the ATA/SATA controller properties in device manager. If the disk IS running in PIO mode, that could be becouse it has bad sectors or a faulty head. So you might want to backup your things.

good luck