Yeah, I wasn't really mentioning that for the OP's sake.
Just thought it was worth (re)stating.  

Last night when I was on that PC I tried switching the driver to WASAPI and Sonar wasn't happy about it. I can't remember the exact message, but it wouldn't work. It may have actually been a Focusrite error.
 
The only time I had the problem was when Sonar was open. Otherwise, I could use media player, youtube, Guitar Pro, PowerDVD, etc. all simultaneously (not that I would).
 
Just dropping Sonar down to 44.1 using ASIO works like a champ.

Every time something updates on my system, the monitor's HD audio driver gets turned back on, so I have to deactivate it again.  Performance improves after doing so.  Note: this was a tip from Craig Anderton last year.
 

It is one of the reasons I stay 44.1, makes life easy and none of my recordings are worth uping the quality for. They sound as good as they're gunna be and a higher sample rate ain't going to make them better. 
Also my 01v only runs at 44.1,, and it makes burning CD's that much easier. 
 

Cactus Music
It is one of the reasons I stay 44.1, makes life easy and none of my recordings are worth uping the quality for. They sound as good as they're gunna be and a higher sample rate ain't going to make them better. 
Also my 01v only runs at 44.1,, and it makes burning CD's that much easier. 
 

I'm not even sure how 48 got kicked up. I'm fairly sure I didn't do it, no reason to, and no one else would have touched anything on the machine, so it's weird. It's a new issue that popped up. I was thinking it was maybe something with a Sonar update taking top priority of the audio or something.