It is bloody frustrating. In a new blank sonar project, the audio now records fine. When I go back to the songs that I have COUNTLESS hours invested, I have the gargling audio problem still while recording new audio. So it appears that this may be just a corrupt file problem. Not that it makes this any less fun.
 
I will submit a problem report for the file and will hope that no one else has this much fun. I will salvage what loops I can and start over...