Here's the thing:

I have multitrack, final mix projects that were [recently] completed in v1.0b. These projects reside on known-good, non-fragmented drives and played flawlessly and repeatedly in v1.0b.

Now, when I attempt to play some of the larger 24-bit, 44.1kHz projects in v3.0a, I get frequent audio dropouts/playback stuttering as if I'm hitting a DSP/CPU headroom limit. I've checked all plug-in chains to verify nothing crazy, checked to make sure that all files are located on high-speed media drives where they should be, adjusted Vegas PB buffering and MOTU buffering ad naseum...To no avail.

The playback stuttering occurs at predictable locations, so it does seem to be a bandwidth issue somewhere...The HD access LED's are *not* showing excessive activity at these points.

What's strange, of course, is that I played and manipulated these same projects mere weeks ago with NO such problems in v1.0b.

SO...Does v3 use up some DSP headroom that v1 doesn't? Could there be a resource hog new to this version? Is this a common problem?

And most importantly: How do I get to work on these projects that are, all of the sudden, too big for my PC???!!!

Please advise, ASAP.

System:

PIII 733
256 MB CAS2 RAM
Abit BE6-II MB
Maxtor and WD 7200 ATA100 and ATA66 drives
W98SE OS
ATI RagePro 4MB AGP graphics
MOTU 1224 interface

Nothing else has changed...

Please help!