Static noise bursts/auto mute

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?

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?).

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

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
 

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
 
 

Deleting the Little PrimalTap-plug didn't help. And the noise appears to come at random channels and buses, not only at the primaltap-bus, as I originally thought. Upped the buffer to 1024 and disabled all effects - the result of this is that audio plays, but there's still random static-like crackling on channels and buses, even though the CPU meters are barely showing any activity.

Inspected the audio clips of the tracks that were giving me trouble, and noticed that they (for unknown reasons) were reported as being 32 bits, while the rest of the project files were 24. Ran the "change audio format"-command set to 24 bits from the project menu - problem solved.