before i changed the routings, i had it like this:
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum ... p?t=112471
at that point, there were some pops and clicks, but they were seldom and i'm pretty sure they went away once i rendered the track.
the problem i had with THAT setup was that i couldnt use ableton's effects on individual drum sounds. that's why i changed it.
i ordered 8 in the mail a few days ago. i'll see if that helps. it also may be useful to know that i have ASIO4ALL installed. it seemed to work fine, but i'm starting to wonder if a new soundcard would be a good idea.
i'm having a hard time believing it could be a CPU issue, as my laptop is a high-end gaming laptop that's less than a year old, but then again, i don't know enough about computers to know if the CPU power that runs games is the same sort of CPU power that runs ableton.
thanks for the help.
-chris