Distorted audio on PC - help needed please

[steved]

I have a problem that I would love to solve ... so if you have any ideas I would really appreciate it. I was bought up with macs - so don't really know how to trouble shoot XP.

The problem .... When I do any of the things listed below audio often distorts loudly for approx 2 - 10 seconds. When the noise stops things work fine ( until the next time I make any changes )

* when I open a song in Live and press play
* when I click on a new clip in session view while a song is playing or when I play a different scene.
* changing patches or altering controls in plugins - especially Cameleon and Reaktor ( also happens using Reaktor in stand alone mode )

Using Reaktor in stand alone just now I noticed the following in Windows Task Manager -

CPU Usage - typically 50% - but drops to 30% whan the audio is distorting
Memory usage 158MB - well below the 500 MB

Increasing the driver latency does not improve things - even if you set it to 100ms

Any ideas ?

Thanks, Steve.

System -
Toshiba Satelite Pro 1.8
XP professional
500 mb ram
Lacie 160 gb external drive
Emagic a 6/2m
Live 4.03

[steved]

Just tried switching the a6/2m to low bandwidth mode - made no difference.

[steved]

Just swapped the emagic a6/2/m for a pod xt and that seems to have solved it. I need to do some more testing.