danebproducer

I need some help fine tuning my recording setup. Here's what I have:

PC running Windows 7 64 bit on AMD 6 core processor 8 gig ram 2TB hard disk

Digirack 002

Cubase 5

Digidesign 002 driver installed
ASIO 4 ALL installed

Everything is up and running... I have some issues that I want to tune out.
First off, driver settings- When I open up cubase, the default driver is the Digidesign 002/003 Driver, set at 1024. When I play a track, the sound is distorted. If I change the settings from 1024> down to 512, the distortion gets worse, and if i bump it all the way up to 4000+ (four thousand something) it improves slightly, but still sounds choppy, and I know the driver shouldn't be running that high.

So then I switch the driver to the asio4all, and go back to play a track, and everything sounds fine with asio4all settings on default settings (512). I can usually run a session like this and have no major issues, I will end up having a headphone delay during tracking, that throws some people off, but the tracks are recorded in time with no delay. This is step two of what I want to fix.

I know many will say "don't use the 002 with cubase" but I have no other choice at the moment. How can best adjust my driver settings so that:

(1) i won't have to switch drivers at the start of every session? (if I do, I guess I could live with it, but its quite annoying)

(2) Am I bottlenecking anything by using ASIO4ALL as opposed to the digidesign driver? Are both drivers being used with this method, using twice as much time and effort?

(3) Also, ASIO4 ALL only does 44.1 or 44.8. Ideally, I would like to be using 88.2 and 96k with 24 or 32 bit float with this setup. The digidesign driver seems to work OK with 88.2 24 bit, but I haven't been able to test too many options, as I don't want to guess too much and vary from default settings until I have an idea of whats going on.

(4) what is the best way to kill that delay when tracking? I am getting headphone monitoring sound by running out the monitor output on the digirack into a headphone amp.

I guess I missed the whole lesson on setting these types of settings up, so a brief overview/ best methods discussion would be helpful.

Thanks!