I get a crackling circus during mixing/mastering

[TacklingDummy]

Granted it's a 30+ track song with tons of plugins, but I've frozen most tracks and I even turn of the mastering chain. I have to restart the application frequently and one wrong move sets the entire thing into crackling again.

1. Buffer is set to the highest
2. Stretch mode is on normal
3 hard drive is 7200 rpm with plenty of space
4. 8 core 2.8 Mac Pro with 16 gb od ram

[Ableton_David]

What does your CPU meter look like?

[TacklingDummy]

Between 35% & 50%. Activity Monitor utility says 104% though.

[Ableton_David]

What other programs/processes are you running while Live is open?

[TacklingDummy]

What other programs/processes are you running while Live is open?

Different stuff at different times. Sometimes nothing. Sometimes Flash seems to set things off.

I'm running Disk Warrior now on the main hd. I'll let you know if that helps.

[TacklingDummy]

Still tons of crackling. Different track. Every track is frozen. Nothing ridiculous in the effects sends or mastering bus. Sometimes a fresh restart fixes it.

[TacklingDummy]

Seems the FW800 drive that I tracked to was conflicting with my Ensemble. Everything works with the internal drive:)