[jponhudson]

Thanks a million for you reply. I am a DAW newbie but a stubborn one:)

does anything every get recorded OK? that you can play back?

I was able to record a guitar track on some of my attempts but the playback was noisy although the the levels were below peak. Than short after that, the software became unresponsive

Can you play back anything at all? If you are not sure create a new empty session at 44.1kHz or 48 kHz and drag and drop a know good commercially recorded audio file onto the Pro Tools edit window. Pro Tools should create stereo audio tracks for that recoding and if you press play on the transport it should play back. Does that work OK? Without static of glitches?

Done. I imported some stock audio which played with similar noise. Fun fact, even when I was playing those samples before downloading them (with my M-Audio used as the sound engine and headphones) I heard the same static noise.

We cannot guess what you are doing. What guitar? What exact guitar, if electric what exact pickups? If acoustic what exact pickups or mic are you using?
plugged in where/how? What exact cable end plugged into what exact connection on the interface? Any pedals or preamps or other things in the signal path?
Are you are trying to record the guitar to an audio or instrument track? Watch out for the common beginner mistake... it needs to be to a mono audio (not instrument) track.

I plugged my Strat directly into the guitar input in my interface with nothing else inserted. Just clean guitar sound with no effects.

What exact driver version did you install for the interface?

I just went to their site and downloaded the only driver they had for Windows 10 "AIR 192|6 Window Driver v1.0.3"


What Setup>Playback Engine is selected in Pro Tools? (what are all the options in the Playback Engine selector pulldown list?)

I used to have ASIO for All as one of the options which I ditched (uninstalled) because the computer seemed to get confused with what I was selecting. Now the only option is M-Audio Air 192/6.

What sample rate are you trying to work at (should be 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz).

44.1

What Setup>IO Buffer size is set?. Set that to the largest size available, likely 1024 samples. Does that fix things (but will have a large latency, just get it working at all for now).

I set in to the maximum but it didn't make any difference.

Trash prefs. (Instructions are found in....) Does that fix things?

Tell me more

Switching from the First to the real thing occurred to me but I was thinking that I want to make sure that I have everything else in order before committing (although I might just do it before you read this:). I am a former (read it no longer playing for money) jazz musician (guitar player) who wants to be able to record some instrumental tracks (bass, guitars) as well as add some synth pads and drum loops to make simple soundtracks for tube videos, perhaps play some midi guitar into the edit window and build compositions in this manner (and adding Sibelius to the equation)

Thank you for your suggestions. So.....what should I do next?