You could separate plugins by category, keeping those meant for mixing/mastering separate from those usable during recording, which would develop over time, as you discovered which ones worked best for tracking and which worked best for mixing/mastering.
 
Bob Bone
 

Tip: If you turn off a plug-in with a long lookahead, the latency will likely still be there. Toggle the DPC button (on and off) and that will take the plug-in out of the equation.

Sanderxpander
4. you're blessed with a memory,

That's the weak link.

robert_e_bone
 This back and forth thing with the latency settings is a normal part of moving between tracking (recording), and mixing/mastering.
 

When I use ASIO, the latency setting are on my Quad-Capture. When I adjust those, I getr a warning telling me to restart my program using it. Is there a way to apply Sonar to ASIO changes without restarting it?

Scoot

robert_e_bone
 This back and forth thing with the latency settings is a normal part of moving between tracking (recording), and mixing/mastering.
 

When I use ASIO, the latency setting are on my Quad-Capture. When I adjust those, I getr a warning telling me to restart my program using it. Is there a way to apply Sonar to ASIO changes without restarting it?

I avoid fiddling wirth latency settings all the time by using  a "tracking mix" in a separate track in the project for any additional tracking once latency starts to become an issue, which goes direct to the main out and then just press E to bypass all fx while tracking. I use WDM/KS and never have to adjust the latency from the fastest setting whether mixing or tracking.
 
 
@ Anderton - thanks for that tip -  I jumped from 8.5 to X3 and didn't even know what that button was for and never bothered to look it up as I already had enough to figure out.

The general recommendation, as I have always understood it, is to power cycle the audio interface after adjusting its settings, which will get a nice fresh chunk of memory allocated per the new settings.
 
This can be done by either a power button on the interface, or if it does not have one and is USB-connected, unplugging the USB cord and plugging it back in will reload the drivers and achieve the same results.
 
For Fire Wire-connected interfaces, or PCI/PCIe-connected devices, one may need to reboot the PC.
 
I generally reboot the PC myself and power=cycle my interface (it has a power switch), which is no big deal, as I only really change settings at this point when moving between tracking and mixing/mastering.  (to set the ASIO Buffer Size low or high as needed).
 
Bob Bone