All those things you tried have no bearing on audio issues like crackles and dropouts.
Cakewalk is more than capable of using a s--t load of vst's and plug ins on dozens of tracks. 
 
As I said, it is your audio driver being hi jacked by something running in the background. 
Always use ASIO mode and the most up to date drivers.
Always use a medium buffer setting while tracking. Low buffer settings can cause dropouts. 
Disable any apps that could run in the background you don't need. 
Disable the internet if it's causing issues, this might happen during a windows update. 

I second the advice re: buffers. there are three different places they can be adjusted. Adjusting them all to 512 seems to have gotten rid of my problem, which was a kind of zapping sound.

I could be missing something (my mind?), but it seems to me that none of the suggestions or diagnoses (with the possible exception of 35mm's suggestion re preferences) in any way explain why only CbB, and not Sonar, suffers from these issues ...even when playing the same audio in the same project on the same computer. 
 
If the cause is my audio driver being hijacked in the background, why does this problem surface only when using CbB, not Sonar? 
 
If the source of the problem is the internet adapter, why does only CbB experience the problem, even though the adapter is also operational when I'm running Sonar?
 
Why should the specific audio interface, or buffer settings, or use of antivirus matter? Same audio file, same project, same computer, same everything...CbB has the problem; Sonar doesn't. 

Hangdog Cat
I could be missing something (my mind?), but it seems to me that none of the suggestions or diagnoses (with the possible exception of 35mm's suggestion re preferences) in any way explain why only CbB, and not Sonar, suffers from these issues ...even when playing the same audio in the same project on the same computer. 
 
If the cause is my audio driver being hijacked in the background, why does this problem surface only when using CbB, not Sonar? 
 
If the source of the problem is the internet adapter, why does only CbB experience the problem, even though the adapter is also operational when I'm running Sonar?
 
Why should the specific audio interface, or buffer settings, or use of antivirus matter? Same audio file, same project, same computer, same everything...CbB has the problem; Sonar doesn't. 

Those were my thoughts too. I have been running SPlat for years with the same ASIO settings, latest drivers, audio settings etc etc (replicated in CbB) and I have never seen this problem in SPlat, only CbB. 
 
Have you tried changing the dithering mode (see my previous post) when the problem occurs?

CbB gives me options only for rectangular or triangular dithering. My understanding is that Powr-1 is not included in CbB due to licensing issues. I'm not sure why you are able to access it in CbB...I can't.

Pow-r dither was restored in CbB 24.04.1.28. Seems like you are running the old early release version. To get the newer version update BA to 3.0.8 then update CbB.

Thanks for the info.