Hey, don't put too much faith in me. The only knowledge I have of multi card is secondhand. I only have a Delta Audiophile in my pc but I do use XP & Sonar and the Delta drivers are the same (but look simpler) for me.
M-audio used to have a 'read me' in an older driver that stated that the multichannel drivers were for Sonar. I don't know if it matters, but deselecting drivers you don't need is supposed to take some cpu load off Sonar. It also makes choosing in and outs simpler if the drop down lists in Track properties only includes those you actually use.
And yeah, glitching audio is more likely to be a windows optimisation problem (things interupting in the background). But XP really is better in that regard.
That Patchbay is exactly what its name suggests. You can "wire" up the physical connections (The Hardware ones) to a choice of Virtual connections (The device drivers that Sonar wants).
Normally you would want Analog out 1/2 to go to H/W out 1/2 - this is the pair you want to monitor from? And this is the output bus you need to select for your Sonar tracks. If 1/2 of card #1 is the only output you're using (what a waste!) then you might as well only have this enabled in Sonars drivers tab. If you want an s/pdif out too, then you'll have card 2 multichannel 9/10 enabled as well (it might not be a good idea to have the s/pdifs used for the card sync available to Sonar anyway, let them do just one job). BTW -in case you haven't guessed, Sonars enabled drivers are highlighted blue. I always run Sonars Profiler again after making these alterations, but I don't know if you really have to, I just do.
Now for inputs. Presumably, you have a monitor mix from your board with the channel directs going straight to the 1010s. So there is no need to patch any 10101 analog ins to the H/w out - you can take it on trust that your mixers monitor is giving a good idea of what is recording - its simpler that way and all you need in Sonar is to set up the tracks record input channel to match the instrument channel feed from your mixer. If you do want to monitor the signal reaching a 1010, see if you can patch another H/W out to another aux in on the Mackie and in the Patchbay set the Monitor Mixer to feed that output - Now the mix set in the Delta panel monitor mixer (mute all but the ins you want to hear) can be heard via a Mackie Aux. I think you can also record from the Delta mon' mix - is it multichannel 11/12?
Complicated isn't it?
Jim
. But why would you ruin your beautifull setup with something like....
.