Most of the animation I do with Design 2010 use 12-20 audio voice over tracks, which I use for timing.  I find that they greatly reduce playback performance.  Of course the audio plays back without skipping, but the FPS drops frames to keep realtime (my preference) (like from ~20-25 fps to 4-7 fps).

I was wondering if it’s a hard drive bottleneck, or if having a dedicated sound card would help, as opposed to onboard audio?

I’ve got Audio/Max files on the same drive, which is Not the OS/Program files drive where WinVistax64 and Max are installed. (two separate physical drives).

I know, according to HD Tune, that my OS drive is on the slow side, but the working drive is about average.

EDIT: link to Blog with some Hard Drive Performance Scores I did last month:
http://loklomedia.com/blog/2010/09/performance-benchmarks-bottlenecks-etc/

Intel q9550 OC 3.4
ATI Firepro v4800
6GB Ram
Win7 Pro x64
Max Design 2011 x64/Composite newb… I also use Blender.