I'm experiencing some strange issues with a project in sonar X3: Playback of a large project (90+ tracks) only lasts a short while, before audio drops out, and is replaced by intermittent bursts of klicking noises.
 
I've tried disabling all the effects, but the issue is still there. Some of the buses show +99,9db on the meter.
 
I've experienced this kind of behaviour before, and those times, it has appeared to be connected to the stereo/mono interleave feature of tracks and buses, the culprit being a stereo effect assigned to a mono track or vice-versa. However,  I've painstakingly gone through the tracks and checked that the interleave button is set correct, with no success.
 
Since it has appeared to be an effect-related issue before, I assumed that this was the case now as well, but when disabling all effects isn't helping, I'm thinking that it's some bug in Sonar and/or my audio drivers. I also updated my RME audio drivers to the latest version, and changed them to WDM from ASIO, increasing both buffer size and the number of buffers (with WDM) without success.
 
Any tips from Cakewalk devs or users?

Have you tried muting some of the tracks to see if there is some vst causing problems or tried playing fewer tracks at a time to see if it is performance related?

Did you do a global bypass (E) on the plugins? Is any sampling in the project (possible I/O buffer issue)? Is ASIO4ALL installed even if not running?

The 99.9dB makes it appear like a plugin issue more than anything else (possible 32bit plugin?).

@kakkus: Yes, I've archived around 1/3rd of the tracks, and when using global bypass (E), got the CPU meters way down. Granted, the CPU load was heavy when the problem first occurred.
@mettelus: I don't understand what you mean with "Is any sampling in the project". No ASIO4all installed. I have no longer any 32 bit plugins installed because of stability issues with jbridge and bitbridge.
 
The problem appears to have some sort of connection to one particular bus, having Soundtoys Little Primal Tap on it, as all the tracks and buses indicating clipping are connected to this via aux sends. I upgraded this to the latest version as well, but with global bypass engaged, it shouldn't matter, should it? Strange indeed.

I'm reluctant to say anything until you tell us your system and audio interface set up. 

Hardware:
RME HDSPe AIO, running at 44.1, latest drivers.
Intel i7 930, 2.4GHz
12GB DDR3 RAM
 
Software:
Win 7 Professional, 64 bit
Sonar X3e Studio, running in ASIO mode at 24bit/44.1Khz with buffer size set to 128. 64-bit version of Sonar, as well as all VST(i)s.
Various VSTs (Slate VCC, Trigger, Waves, SoundToys, Valhalla verbs, etc)
 

1 - What happens if you bump up your ASIO Buffer Size?  
2 - Does the problem go away if you remove that PrimalTap plugin?
 
I did some digging, but other than some disputed reports of it crashing some other hosts, and a post elsewhere about it inducing undesired DPC Latency (which I could not confirm beyond the one post I saw reporting that), I didn't see any particular problems reported with usage of this plugin.
 
I don't know why global bypass of all effects ('E') wouldn't change the results either, by the way.  It does seem a bit odd.
 
Bob Bone
 

Most of the times I tried increasing the buffer, it made no difference, but one of the times I set it to 256, the intermittent static popping was replaced by constant sound that sounded like a distorted square wave.
 
I'll try to delete both PrimalTap as well as its bus when I get home later tonight, and report back how it goes.

I will say this - it certainly sounds like your ASIO Buffer Size is too low for all of what you have being processed at this time.
 
If you have it set to 128 because you are still tracking/recording, then I would suggest reducing the processing load of the added effects (swap/bypass/remove/freeze).  
 
If instead, you are mixing, then I would bump that ASIO Buffer Size way up - when I mix I set mine to a buffer size of 1024.
 
Hope that helps, 
 
Bob Bone
 
 

Allright, I'll try that as well. Thanks.