sonar 7dropout tried many ways pl help

[BanjoRiche]

I have an Computer ACER aspire 8930, Processor is
Intel (R) Core (TM)2 Duo T5800 @ 2.00 GHz 2.00 GHZ 4.00 GB Vista
32-bit Operating System as per computer details but I thought it was 64 must check that ??
Cakewalk sonar 7 home studio FOR about 4 weeks now NIL before that,
Audiobox USB Presonus Cost approx $180 with choice of mic and inst channel, two out lines and ear phone.
Dropouts not showing a consistent pattern except that they are very very frequent
I may get 4 measures or up to 20 approx. Twice it seemed all ok
got a few full songs and up to 4 tracks approx.
32 bit play and record at that time then all droppingout again. Second time
it was at 512 got a few songs. Then all dropping out again.
I have played !! with the settings for some weeks. I always disable the
internet button.
I have tried very hard to disable AVG virus full protection
BUT interestingly enough on the last occasion that all was ok and not dropping out (record and play) all was turned on incl internet and virus pack.
I have changed all scheduling and tried to stop unnecessary programmes.
Today I as usual tried the task manager and there were two distinctly different
occurrences
1. sonar rose from 2 -3 % CPU to some 20% and over and sudden or slow
stagger to dropout
so I thought it must be sonar !! later I checked again
2. there were the usual dropouts but sonar was not changing to the high cpu usage which of course accompanied each frequent dropout BUT
and I failed completely to locate any other area in the task mgr
where there was an significant increase. Audiograph was in fact going from
0% to 5 approx. This is a lengthy Explanation so excuse it.
I have not noticed great differences between different settings but
it did improve when I used the ext sound usb presonus but dropouts
were still very frequent. I do switch off the other items like mike line etc in sound mgr control panel. Tried reset config in audio and many settings !!!
Any help on this all too prevalent universal problem would be appreciated. bANJORICHE

[ralpheo]

I am by no means the authority on this (there are a few guys here with some serious mixing and mastering skills), but I'll give this a shot.
From reading quite a few posts about sampling rates, bit depths, and dealing with dropouts in Sonar,etc: I am under the impression that 24 bit recordings are the industry (studio) standard.
I just recently also upgraded to Sonar Home Studio 7, with less processing power (2.4 ghz), but in three weeks have only experienced two dropouts. Since I am not recording "finished" versions, just reference tracks for others to work from, I'm using 16 bit recordings.
Check your sampling rate. 44100 hz is cd qualty. I experienced dropouts , whine and distortion in Sonar LE when I tried to bump my sampling rate to 48000 or more in my EMU 1616.
Hope this helps. I'm sure others will have more and better advice.
Good Luck

[BanjoRiche]

Thanks for taking the time. Well yes I did notice last night that my recording is set to 16 bit and I tried 24 but it didnt really work - however that may well be part of it all. Good to hear that my comp is good enough. I was thinking of getting a secondhand comp to leave dedicated to this "little Hobby" - But as I said one night it all worked perfect and I had not turned off other processes.
Now I did notice also last night and now that the usb sound card Presonus is set to a default of 24 bit 48000 so I am changing that to 44100 to try it. But it is interesting that its default is 48000.
AVG total protection seems as if impossible to turn off. I stop the id protection, and exit the avg tray I try also opening the main screen and disable individual parts but I think it keeps trying to annoy the comp !! and me. Thanks work in progress. banjoriche

[BanjoRiche]

Wel i set at 24 and then I enabled catch read adn write. worked at 256 and went quite well then oop and I just set it at 2048 i did manage to reduce the amount of AVG interference. I also noticed that its vista 32 not 64
I have now got 10 hours of peace Thanks for the help.

[BanjoRiche]

Still going well.

[ralpheo]

No problem, glad I could help.
Keep an eye on your system resources: The less you have going on while you are recording, the better. I've never had a problem with AVG getting in the way, but who knows?
Another thing you need to do is to keep your hard drives defragmented. If your DAW has to search for chunks of data, it could slow down your system.

[BanjoRiche]

Well yes I do defrag and clean and there is so much room anyway. On the Avg
thing I expect that it may be ok when I get used to it -- it is still going well.
AVG that I use is the full pack and that has so many parts --- Anyway you did really get me going when i was fading out myself. again thanks