I was fiddling around with Kristal just a couple of days ago, it sounded fine to me, the metering sucks, only two effect inserts per channel sucks, no aux send/return channels sucks, it is very basic, but it sounded fine, it just might be the best freebie multi-tracker software out there.
I was running it with an
M-Audio FW-410, using ASIO drivers, I imported an old 4 track session from CEP into it, it worked fine, then I recorded a few guitar tracks into it, everything worked as it should, as for your popping, it could be a setting somewhere, did you clip the recording? the metering is pretty crappy, what are you using for a soundcard?
Here's a link to a freebie VST effect chainer that'll let ya stack up as many VST plugins as ya need in just one insert slot.
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1068.html
It's a RAR file, so you'll need WinRAR to open it, you can download a free 40 day trial version that'll do the trick, (worked for me)
http://www.download.com/3000-2250-10007677.html
Have fun...
