Generally audio glitches in recording are due to two things...hard drives that arent doing what they are supposed to or you have some digital clock set wrong..I've come across cases where it couldnt be solved..I deduced it was a hard drive issue..possibly a bad cable or a bad configuation. Also keep in mind RAID systems can be a hassle to configure as much as a good thing as they are. I usually stick with IDE configs for safer operation. If you have two ATA100 drives you should be all set..keeping the config you described is definately the way to go. Other things to try is making sure that nothing besides the audio programs are running in the background of the OS...also that nothing starts up when windows starts up..is there a RAID programs that starts up and has to be running? Have you tried lowering your graphic acceleration for your video card? 32MB video cards can tax audio performance. Defragged your drives? Optimized your recording apps? Tried a different audio interface? I've seen many a problems with aardvark cards.
Opus

I'm using the same mobo w/733 PIII, no raid. I don't know specifically what control you have over the raid, but I had a similar problem. Disabling all read ahead and write behind cacheing fixed it for me, just using the on-board controllers. I haven't pushed the envelope on my system, but 24 audio tracks using Cakewalk PA9 @ 16 bit and ATA66 IDE drive for data works for me. It might do 32, haven't tried...

Thanks Doc...altho you should get rid of the cakewalk allready..geez!! hee hee!!
Opus :D

Thanks for the tips. I disabled the raid and I am only using one drive at the moment. One thing I have been trying to figure out is how to enable DMA on the hard drives and CD-RW. My bios shows UDMA5 but windows 98SE hard disk window doesn't show that option. I asked some people about it and they didn't know what was going on. I updated the bios and drivers from Intel, but still no DMA option allowed. Could it be the board I have doesn't allow this, or is it being applied without enabling it. I also would like opinions on the Intel 815EEAL vs the ASUS CUSL2-C boards. Which is a better board. Sorry for all the questions but I have one more, How do you use the two onboard UDMA/ATA 100 controllers, keeping the drives seperate, and using a Plextor CD-RW which likes to run as a master device only. Any help would be appreciated.

A lot of motherboards BIOS dont have a field in whihc to configure the DMA...that's usually within the OS to control that. For Win98SE you got to the Device Manger and into the Disk Drives and choose the properties for each drive and turn DMA on...also in the Device Manager go to CDROM and turn DMA and Auto Insert Notification off under each property of the CDROM's installed.
A motherboard has two controllers...Primary and Secondary..put your main OS/app drive on the Primary cable and put the Audio data drive on the Secondary cable. Make sure that both drives are set as masters on each cable and make the CDROM's the slaves.
I have never worked with an Intel board so I couldnt tell you what the difference is between the two mainboards. All I know is that most people working on PC DAW's always go with Asus since they are very reilable boards.
Opus

Li - A stupid question, are you using the proper drive cables? Standard IDE cables won't do, you need to get the ATA66/100 cables (twice as many conductors, same connectors). That might explain why you're not seeing the speeds...

Opus - what do you mean, get rid of the Cakewalk? I just finished a Sonar Studioware panel for the US-428, works well, I'm kinda liking Sonar now!

Hi doctordale, I'm using ATA/100 cables on everything in my system. The Plextor CD-RW is only DMA 2 (ATA/33). I took out the raid card and I'm only running one C drive and I'm able to record at least 16 tracks at 32 bit float point. I'm sure I will be able to record several more before running into trouble. My concern is that there is no option to enable DMA on any of the hardrives or CD-RW. I know how to do this procedure, but there is no option for DMA. Windows 98SE shows all the other drive options except for DMA. The CPU meter is pretty low without plug-in's, so I'm assuming DMA is enabled automatically. If anyone can explain this to me, I would appreciate it. Thanks

P.S.- Is anybody looking to buy a Promise fastrack 100/raid card?

Check the IBM website. They have a utility that you need to run on your hard drives to enable all the features. The utility creates a bootable floppy. The program is self explanatory once it loads. Be sure to change your BIOS setup to boot to floppy first. It's strange to me that the drives aren't ready to go out of the package but they are not.
BTW Win98 does not support raid, nor does NT workstation nor Win2k Pro. You need NT server or Win2k server. You may be able to find a 3rd party product that will make it work.? Be sure that you have compatible drivers and that your PC supports NT, Win2k before you switch your OS.