Strange noise and dropouts (SPDIF)

[HomoNeophilus]

We're recording digitally two channels through a Mytek Stereo96, with SPDIF going into a simple M-audio Audiophile 2496 PCI-card. To capture this we use Soundforge 8. And it's (unfortunately) a Dell computer.

We've only used this setup for a few weeks and have now noticed dropouts on the recorded files. Sometimes a part of the sound is just missing, without a gap or anything, and sometimes theres a gap where you can see the curve being a straight DC for a few ms. It seems to be random and the computer wasn't used for anything else at the time.

How could this be? What's probable to be the weak link?
Has anyone experienced this with any of this equipment?

I can't imagine it's the Mytek so i theorize it's either the Audiophile (cheap...), the cable (1m, 75ohm, should be ok), crappy PCI-bus (Dell, remember...) or something with the software. Or maybe the combination.

Any ideas on how to make a test to see what could be wrong?

[Bosskitty]

Sounds like either the M-Audio is loosing its clock or else the buffer settings in the software are set too low!