Sorry to hear about this as I have encountered the very same issue. You may have already discovered this but the HD your samples currently reside on is probably too slow. Ultimtately I had to purchase an external Raid 0 HD enclosure. I dropped 2 10,000 rpm raptors in a sans-digital eSATA enclosure and my problems went away. Now this may have been overkill. :-) At the very least a dedicated drive is necessary. I highly recommend a raid setup with at least 2 7200 RPM drives within. Especially if you want to use all velocity layers. Hope I haven't repeated something you've already heard. Anyway i hope this helps. -T