Ok, I switched over to the WDM/KS drivers, I also turned off Core Parking. Although I'm not sure how much good these did, I still had a few stutters. I then booted up without the WiFi adapter in, and things seem to go pretty smoothly, no stutters noticed (it was not as smooth if I booted up WITH it, then unplugged it), although I'm still skeptical & will have to wait and see if that actually prevents all the issues. Since I'd prefer to not have to reboot every time I want to work on music with no headache, I'll keep trying other tweaks for boosts here and there.

Star Tekh, I hadn't installed any new drivers for the CPU or the motherboard. After seeing your comment I checked both. Installed AMD's catalyst which seems to be the only way to get drivers from them. My mobo is a Biostar A960D+. Biostar's site has some chipset drivers that are newer than when I built the system, but none of them specify Windows 8 (only up to Win 7), so I don't know if installing them would have any benefit, or worse yet, cause more problems.
 
Freex, I when I tried a few other things I did disable the ethernet adapter just in case it has any impact.
 
About to reboot now and see if I can disable AMD's 'Cool n Quiet' (their equivalent to Speedstep).

ZeroContrast:
 
I didn't see anyone ask about any potential causes for disk I/O bottlenecks as I perused this thread.  So I'll ask.
 
Do you happen to have any kind of "nonstop backup software" running that might be competing for I/O bandwidth to your disk drives?  How about virus scanning software that is attempting to scan audio files you are accessing from Sonar? 
 
I ask this because I had stuttering when recording and playback a few years back and that was the cause.  My backup software was configured to back up when I logged in if it wasn't able to backup at the prescheduled time.  So, consequently, whenever my backup software missed a scheduled backup, I wasn't able to use reliably use Sonar without stuttering until my backup software finished the backup cycle.
 
Hoping this may help,
Paul

Zero...try here ...  http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/chipset?os=Windows+8+-+32
 
AMD Chipset Drivers53 MB14.44/25/2014

Hey, Paul. Thanks for the input.
 
As far as backup software, I use Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, or for different things. Google Drive I only ever start when I've added new photos to its folder, Dropbox I always shut down before I work in Sonar (partly because I files go to the DB folder so it would constantly be backing up and slowing things down as I record). And OneDrive I usually either have syncing paused or kill the process as well.
 
My antivirus software is UnThreat. I got it because it's pretty low on resource use anyway, maybe like 10MB tops. I never see any signs that it is actively scanning any files as I use them, and occasionally I even kill its process too, which makes little to no difference.

@StarTekh,
 
Thanks for the link, that's the one I installed from yesterday. I'm also about to check my mobo manual because the method I found to disable Cool n Quiet calls for pressing F1, which doesn't seem to do anything for me.
 

Zero. good work sometimes we have to go the extra mile to get Sonar working .. I did some further reading
 
http://www.biostar.com.tw...uction.php?S_ID=627#dl
 
78LMP904.BSSUpdate Agesa code2048 KB2014-09-04
 
BTW I use cpu-z to confirm that the processor's are running at full speed ..always ..so your bios tweek's are VIP
 
 

Hey I'll check out cpu-Z.
 
So if anyone ever needs to know, instead of the usual AMD Cool n' Quiet, on a Biostar motherboard it's called PowerNow. I disabled that. Also read about an option called C1E that affects clock speed, people on overclockers.com recommending turning that off for speed boost, it was disabled on my mobo by default.
 
Last night I did some problem free recording (which did happen occasionally before, so we'll see it goes). That's using WDM drivers, PowerNow (same as Cool n' Quiet and Intel's Speedstep) disabled, core parking turned off, updated AMD chipset drivers, updated Bios with Biostar utility, and booting up without my WiFi adapter in. I'm gonna try again soon and see if I maybe I can do without having to boot up without the WiFi adapter in after these other tweaks. Cheers for all the help guys. If anyone knows of anything else, still drop it in, I may still need it, and others could use it when they come across.
 
P.S. drive fragmentation wasn't an issue, checked on that, Win 8 is set to do it automatically by default, and it actually does it, so even trying to manually do it was only like a 3 minute job, falt-out non-issue.

Have you looked at the processes in task manager in real time?  Is there a process(es) that spike when you glitch?  If not, you might have to consider a hardware problem IMO.
 
If you don't have an SSD drive, you might consider getting a small one and making it your project drive.  I had an old computer that started glitching and I got a couple of extra years out of it by using an SSD. 

Hey, Ian, things are going smooth at the moment.
 
I know I've watched the CPU in real time to see if it is going higher once I start playback, can't recall if i watched for anything in particular during spikes, but if I have any more I'll have a look at that, cheers.