Just an update from the initial post. Ever since I bought my RME UFX, I have had a mostly stable Sonar. Apart from some release updates last year that caused some soft synth timing issues and occasional 'stop working' due to opening an existing project - this hasn't happened for a while now - it's pretty good. Ever on the odd occasion with a crash due to some plug-in spitting the dummy, Plt unloads from the system almost instantly - v's hanging there for 5 odd minutes...thanks Roland Quad. I now use the latter for system sounds only.
Love my RME! Worth the expense.