What am I doing wrong?

I have Audition installed to do voice-over and audition reels. When I try to record ANYTHING over a sample rate of 32000, the app slows to a crawl and does not record. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app twice. I have removed any other apps that I thought could be conflicting with Audition. I have stopped processes in Task Manager that I thought were taking up ram... NOTHING is working. I can only record at 32000 or lower... which won't work.

What am I doing wrong, and how can I fix it so that I can use this app for my needs. SUPER frustrated.

I have a very new Dell computer with 16g DIMM Ram and an Intel I7. When I FIRST installed the app, I was able to make a sample reel... NOW, now I can do nothing and I am begging for help.