Cubase LE problem.... posted by guita...

I have a strange issue that I'm hoping someone can help me with. I recently upgraded hardware to include a dual core processor(AMD), so I had to reinstall Windows along with Cubase LE, which came bundled with my EMU 1616m PCI interface.

Earlier today I was working on a project when all of a sudden, the audio level indicator in Cubase maxed out, and I lost sound. After this, I restarted, and proceded to open up the project again. This time, the audio was very laggy and garbled, much like when you don't have your latency buffers set correctly. However, the garbles and pops correspond to my HDD activity. I also noticed that whenever the hard drive is active, the CPU usage meter spikes, and it is at that point I get that weird "digitized" garbled sound.

I tried disabling all VST plug-ins that I had running. Whenever I clicked the power button to turn off these effects, I got a pop, and sometimes the audio level meter would return to normal, and sometimes it would not. I also tested other audio programs to make sure that it wasn't my soundcard. Reason 4.0 still runs fine, as well as basic MP3 playback, etc. I also tried opening different projects in Cubase to see if it was limited to just the project. It is not.

I have an error message which was generated by Cubase at one point, and ever since then it has been acting as described above. If this error message would be of help, let me know and I will post it.

It's strange to me because one second, I'm working on the song, the next second, this. Another thing that baffles me is that I can record NEW tracks all day long, and they play back fine. However, this could only be because I didn't bother to use VST when I tested it.

Also - after I reinstalled Cubase, I was prompted to re-register another Bundled VST plugin that I use called T-Racks EQ(IKMultimedia). At first I thought it had something to do with the registration window popping up in the VST area. But now I'm not sure.

I have checked my HDD and it is free of errors. My hardware is as follows:

AMD X2 3600
2gb RAM
EMU 1616m PCI Audio Interface
Cubase LE
Reason 4.0
Guitar Rig 2.0

I have built many machines in the past and I'm very familiar with computers and recording hardware. But this one has me stumped. This is NOT the common "buffer settings" issue. I'm aware of that problem and as I said above, this computer ran FLAWLESSLY before this issue began - and I have changed no settings at all since it last ran properly.