How well does reaper run for you?

Which OS are you running? I'm on 7x64 now, but I don't remember such a behaviour under XP with the ol' Core2Duo. It sounds like an IRQ conflict with the graphics adapter (or another hardware part of your puter, USB most likely).

Presumably you have looked in task manager to see what ELSE is running that could be pulling your performance down? Do you have a wireless connection enabled when trying to record? There are a bunch of background tasks that could be doing this and you may simply have overlooked disabling one. Worth a try.

I did not think to check the wireless connection. I will check that out. Good to know that you guys have similar hardware and are runner much smoother. Looks like I have some major debugging to do. Im currently running windows 7 64-bit. I ran a latency checker and it said that my computer should be able to run large project proficiently. So that tells me that you guys are likely right in regards to a conflict. This all makes me sorta happy as I spent a lot of money on this computer over the last year or so and am not ready to upgrade just yet. There are a lot of good ideas in here so far thanks everyone.

I run a lot of projects on a Q9400, 4GB ram, SSD OS-drive and a USB 7200RPM project drive. I have none of the issues you mention (nor did I have them on the E6750 before that or even the AMD AthlonX2 before that), so I'm convinced there is something else going on with your system. Some of the usual suspects have already been mentioned in the thread.

see my specs below, it's a dream by and large

my lappy dual core 1.6 with 2gb happily runs decent sized projects with lots of VST and VSTi. I use a Focusrite Saffire6 USB interface and get really surprisingly good performance for such a humble box.

I use a pci RME interface on the studio computer & looked at a lot of boxes before buying the saffire6. One of the contenders was Mackie but but I read so many negative threads on various fora regarding ALL of Mackie1s attempts at an interface (remember the spike?) that I crossed it off the list early on. Still not convinced your problem is interface only, and asio4all is definitely NOT a permanent solution, as it isnt really a proper asio driver, but a wrapper pretending to be asio. OK for testing stuff but I would not rely on it for anything mission critical.

Have a look at as well. It did help me when I switched to a new machine with a new interface.

I use a intel c2d 2 ghz notebook with 3gb of ram and everything works fine AFTER disabling all power management and some poorly implemented drivers. If DPC Latency reports low latency (not only green, you should be able to get it stable around 50-60 micro seconds max), you are probabling facing CPU Throttling and Core Parking. If you cant disable it in the BIOS and the CPU does not obbey windows 7 power profiles (on my note, it doesnt work), you will need to install some kind of software to keep the cpu on max 100% of the time. What happens is that Reaper will never keep the CPU usage high, and the power management will change CPU power states accordingly. The problem is that when the power state changes, it usually generates a long DPC call, and the audio drops out.

On my side it run rock solid like a "bad A**" :)