Hey there,

My name is George Strezov and I'm a young film composer from Bulgaria. I've worked in the field for... more than 6 years now trying to get better each and every day
Today I've bought my first RME product (yey, finally!!!) and I'd say that I was smashed by the detail of the sound card - I've used M-Audio Audiophile 2496 and Mbox 2 till now, but I guess it was about time to get things started.

I'm not very familiar with all those ADAT / AES functions - I've read everything about them, but still it's kinda blurry. I just want to compose without problems on my computer. So, the problem is that my current orchestral template with East West PLAY is annoying me with clicks and pops during large musical climaxes.
Don't get me wrong - I've tried everything (not that much of a noob) - I've played my largest audio projects (pop-rock mixes and orchestral recordings) without a single issue (so far). The buffer settings were to 512 - something pretty normal.

Now, things with MIDI were not that good, sadly. I had to turn my buffer settings to 2048 (!!!) just to play through till the middle of the track. Yesterday, I was working on that dense orchestration with my Audiophile and buffer settings set to 1024. And I could have played it on 512 as well.
So, did I get something very, very wrong? I don't want to get back to Audiophile and soon I'll have a project that I should take care for. I'm enclosing my system details:

Win 7 64
Cubase 6.5
Intel i5 3.20 ghz
16 GB Ram Kingston
RME HDSPe Aio with latest drivers

Routing:
I'm getting my sound through my Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer, using the RME's breakout cable Line I/O outputs. Sound coming from Genelecs 8030A, if it matters.

VSTs:
East West Quantum Leap:
Hollywood Strings Gold
Hollywood Brass Gold
Symphonic Orchestra Gold
StormDrum 2
... and other

everything is with latest drivers / versions installed.
Here are some pictures for you to see:

Thank you very much again!
Much appreciated!

Best,
George.