Last week I started hearing various pops and clicks in audio I recorded in CbB. So I closed the project and re-started it in Sonar Platinum. Wa-la...no more pops and clicks when listening to the very same audio track in the same project on the same computer. 
 
This has happened in other projects I have started since then. 
 
So I have switched back to using Sonar Platinum, and am also taking another look at Cubase, which I bought when Sonar went belly up. Truth be told, their MIDI implementation is quite tempting anyway. (But I still love Sonar/Cakewalk by whatever name. I've been using it for 20 years, and that's hard to walk away from.)
 
Any thoughts? Thanks.

I have 2 64bit computers that I'm trying to use CbB with:
• a Win7 prof, i5, 16 gb of ram. I do not have the rest of the specs in front of me at this moment. It was gifted to me from my former employer. Works great until I get several tracks going, then there is cracking, popping, and a slow down of all the material. (which may be a different issue than yours? Like an inferior machine or slower hard drive?)
• a windows 10 machine, [link=mailto:i7@2.4gHz,]i7@2.4gHz,[/link] 8 Gig of Ram; no problems at all recording additional trax for the same song.
 
What gives? I don't know.

kevro2000
What gives? I don't know.

What audio interface/what type of driver? What buffer settings? Are you using an antivirus? (If so, which?) Are you connected to the internet when you are running Cakewalk? (Especially a consideration if you are on wifi)
What plugins are you using when you start to get cracking/pops?

There are some preferences that don't get copied to Cake I believe, so check your prefs are the same. Also, I had a problem last week when opening a Sonar project to mix it in Cake - I could hear some very subtle audio artefacts that sounded like pops and clicks very low in the mix. I went through soloing tracks, but it was coming through a backing vocal mix bus even with other tracks soloed. It turned out to be Sonitus Gate on that bus that was putting out a chopped up vocal sound even with another track soloed. I deleted Sonitus Gate and added another gate and that fixed it. Not sure why the hell that happened, but maybe worth checking.

Same thing happened to me last night. Same setup I've used with Splat. Didn't hear it while recording though.
 
Same setup and settings in Splat recorded clean as it always did.

Same thing happened to me tonight in CbB. Editing a fairly light project with doubled vocal tracks. While editing a vocal track in melodyne editor I was getting crackles and pops.

Saved the project, exited and loaded the same project into Splat and no crackles.

Generally pops and crackles are Dpc related. Something is interrupting your audio. 
Defiantly turn off ( disable)  your Internet adapter while troubleshooting, 99% of the time this will fix it. 
 
Run this https://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml
 
 
 

I'm not sure if audio buffers for CbB are stored differently from Sonar. Trying now.
<test 1, 2, 3 />
For me, my buffer stays consistent as I switch between CbB and Sonar, so that isn't the answer.

Brando

kevro2000
What gives? I don't know.

What audio interface/what type of driver? What buffer settings? Are you using an antivirus? (If so, which?) Are you connected to the internet when you are running Cakewalk? (Especially a consideration if you are on wifi)
What plugins are you using when you start to get cracking/pops?

Brando, I noticed the Win7 machine had somehow had WASAPI for audio, instead of ASIO. Not sure if I did that in error somehow at installation of CbB, or if my Scarlett interface auto chose it. CW would not save the setting when I changed to ASIO, so I rebooted the machine. Now it seems to be retaining ASIO in the Preferences.
 
I will not be recording again until morning on that machine, but I have successfully been editing some bass clips, and playing tracks with everything "on" and, knock on wood, no issues, yet.
Thanks, Kevin

Just had the crackle re-occur in CbB. The project was an imported MIDI file I was auditioning using TTS-1 plus an adlib'ed vocal audio part (to replace the MIDI vocal part). I had played it a few times with no problem when the crackle suddenly started happening.
 
The crackle was constant on all audio outputs (vocal audio and TTS-1). I tried disabling a few ProChannel modules on the Vox and Instrument busses - CA2A, Breverb, Console Emu but that made no difference. Then I went into preferences and changed Audio --> Playback and Recording --> Dithering from Triangular (the default I always use) to Pow-r1 and the crackle disappeared.