SONAR services...what to kill when SONAR crashes?

You're limited as to what you can glean from the dump file, but some useful information can be had. You'll first need a program that can decipher the dump. The standard tool is WinDbg, which you can download from Microsoft for free.
 
Open the dump file, and the program will immediately display some information about it. At the bottom of that initial listing you'll find the first piece of useful information: the type of fault that occurred. More often than not, it'll be an access violation (0xc0000005), in which case you can assume that the problem is a bug in either SONAR or in a plugin, and you'll have to take it up with the vendor. Next step is to determine if it's a plugin, and if so, which one - so you'll know who to complain to.
 
Type "!analyze -v" in the command window at the bottom. Give it a minute or two to process the dump. It'll complain about the lack of symbol files, but ignore that. After it's done, scroll to the bottom and you'll see the name of the faulting module. Look for a line that reads "MODULE_NAME". It might be the name of your video driver, your audio driver, a Windows module, SONAR itself, or a plugin. If it's a plugin, the file name will be labeled "IMAGE_NAME", as shown in the example below.
 
If the faulting module is sonarpdr.exe, you won't be able to determine much more than that, because
you need a symbol table to correlate addresses to functions within the executable. If the fault originated in SONAR, it's best to send the dump to Cakewalk, where they'll have the required symbol file. If it's a plugin, send the dump to the plugin vendor, who will have the required symbols for their DLL needed to determine where in their code the problem originated.
 
Here's an example:
 
TACK_COMMAND: ~0s; .ecxr ; kb
SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 0
SYMBOL_NAME: BarkOfDog_x86+6b25
FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner
MODULE_NAME: BarkOfDog_x86
IMAGE_NAME: BarkOfDog_x86.dll
DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 51e4d41c
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: INVALID_POINTER_READ_c0000005_BarkOfDog_x86.dll!Unknown
BUCKET_ID: APPLICATION_FAULT_INVALID_POINTER_READ_BarkOfDog_x86+6b25
 
I've bolded the most-significant bits of information, which show that the error occurred in a plugin called BarkOfDog_x86.dll and that it was an access violation (INVALID_POINTER_READ_c0000005). The line labeled "SYMBOL_NAME" would show the actual function name within the DLL if you had the symbol file, but only the vendor will have that. That's why it's helpful to send the crash dump to the vendor.
 
BTW, this particular crash happened with an early version of Bark of Dog, a bass-boost plugin. Such occurrences are commonplace when you're beta-testing or running a 1.0 version of a new plugin.