Extremely frequent crackling on playback (was fine yesterday - nothing has changed since)

Is your computer connected to the internet?
Have you had any Microsoft updates recently?
Has your computer been automaticaly restarted after upgrades?

The crackling and noises while moving a mouse around is common and you can ignore it as it will not have any effect on your recordings. It possibly a wireless or pour shielding of your USB system. I get it and have determined that it's my USB system and there's not much I can do about it other than somehow shield the internal wiring. It goes away if I use a hardwired mouse and keyboard but the wireless is just more convenient as I often move away from the desk while overdubbing vocals and guitar. 
On some systems it's been reported as video card related. 
But bottom line is it does not get recorded. 
To test insert a audio track and set it to record with nothing plugged in to your interface. 
Crank up the gain too. Record this silence while moving the mouse all over and even clicking buttons in Sonar an my guess is the sound will not be recorded to the track. 

Well that is different than the mouse issue.
Could be audio driver related so make sure your up to date with driver and firm ware. 
I've also heard of a static build up being a plug in that goes weird in memory. What does your memory usage show?   
The usual way to trouble shoot issues like this is start disabling Plug ins.  
Also check your cables, including USB,  you never know, I think this just happened in another thread. 
 
I swapped out my USB cable to my interface for one with a Choke on it and it made a difference with the mouse issue. 
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Check the Motherboard manual, and see what slots share with what...if you can move the video card off of any slots which have on board controllers, and such, or reduce the amount of things on or shared on one slot, by moving a card, might help make the mouse on wi fi better, if wi fi/blue tooth devices are interacting with video/audio? , and or video is some how being shared with audio....HDMI audio?.... is not a good idea if using DAWs and add on audio devices/plus on board Audio....So home work should reflect in making sure these guide lines are made, to root out setup issues....turning things off in bios that are redundant, so as to free up and make proper slot assignments so less is shared by force....too much shared on one line,or slot with a video or audio card in that slot causes problems!...win may also randumly share when booting up...so one day it is like great, and then on one day, it is not....I found....until you make it so .
 
Regards

in my case, the crackling started the first time I opened x3 after installing platinum.   for all the GUI problems with x3, it had been perfectly solid in the audio field before today.

skitch_84
Also, I just opened some other projects and the issue seems to be isolated to just this one project. What in the world does that mean!?

Just out of curiosity, if you hit the global plugin bypass ("E") does the issue go away? It almost sounds like you have a plugin with look ahead and a buffer that is too small. Some plugins are meant to mix only, and require a larger buffer; although 512 is about as high as I have needed to mix and you are already there.
 
If the above doesn't show a plugin issue, another thing to try is to save the project first with a new name. Then start deleting tracks one by one (playing back between each) to see where/if it resolves. Another option that works for certain situations is to select all tracks and in the Track View, bounce to new tracks. There have been a few cases where a bad track will hang that bounce function on the bad track itself.

Update:

I figured out the cause of the problem. Well, let me reword that. I figured out the plugin that was causing the problem, but I still don't know what the problem was exactly. 

So, I use u-he Satin Tape Emulation on every mix. I generally put an instance of it on every track as well as on my premaster bus. For some reason, that instance on the premaster was the cause of all this trouble. If I turned it off, the crackling would go away. I turn it back on and it would come back. It's very odd because I've done this exact same thing on numerous other mixes and never had a problem. So, my solution was to remove it from my premaster bus, bounce all of the tracks to a new track, then put the "premaster" Satin on that new track in order to get that 'tape glue' on the full mix. Same effect, just one more step is all. 

I'm curious if anyone has any ideas as to what the actual issue was. Anyone? :)

skitch_84
Update:

I figured out the cause of the problem. Well, let me reword that. I figured out the plugin that was causing the problem, but I still don't know what the problem was exactly. 

So, I use u-he Satin Tape Emulation on every mix. I generally put an instance of it on every track as well as on my premaster bus. For some reason, that instance on the premaster was the cause of all this trouble. If I turned it off, the crackling would go away. I turn it back on and it would come back. It's very odd because I've done this exact same thing on numerous other mixes and never had a problem. So, my solution was to remove it from my premaster bus, bounce all of the tracks to a new track, then put the "premaster" Satin on that new track in order to get that 'tape glue' on the full mix. Same effect, just one more step is all. 

I'm curious if anyone has any ideas as to what the actual issue was. Anyone? :)

It's probably a dodgy plugin (sometimes you don't find out till much much later), there are probably new conditions that are making it behave that way.
 
Is it 32 or 64 bit? Are there any updates for it?

The advice in post #9 may still apply and as you now think it's a plugin issue I recommend running Windows update several times and checking the optional updates (could be a library issue).
 
You may also consider a VST reset followed by a rescan:
https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013315/SONAR-X3-Full-VST-Rescan-Recommended-for-Upgraders
 
 
Ta

Cheers - sorry I edited my post above there is further advice (VST reset) - thanks...
I strongly recommend you check out all the other advice as well in #9 just to be sure there isn't another factor.
 
Cheers...