One thing I learned today was that the funky powersaving things that computers can do these days, such as not running full speed unless it really needs to, do odd things with audio applications. Make sure you turn off those features so that your computer is always running full speed if you want to do audio on it, otherwise, your sequencer will report that it is more used than it really could be, and you’ll have a lot less processing power to use since the app won’t push it into full speed mode.

I’d come to the point where I thought the drivers for my Firestudio were complete crap because I couldn’t even play back a song at 512 samples of latency on a quad core computer without getting pops and clicks. Now, with that powersaving crap turned off, I can play back at 256 samples, if I want (192 is still a no go, however). The drivers still have some problems, but the thing is not as much a pile of doo as I had thought it was.