Hey guys, Merry Christmas and cheer in spite of the close of Cakewalk :(
I am in need of some assistance with issue I've gone up and down the wall with.
 
Specs

• Win 10 64-bit
• 8 gb RAM
• 1 TB HD
• Intel Core i7-4700MQ @ 2.4GHz (8 CPUS)

Now, the 8 cpus thing is recent, I used to only have 4 but then this last windows update (1709) hit.
PROBLEM:
I'm getting a consistent, echoey crackle from my VSTs in playback, recording, and input echo (Only XLN and KONTAKT. DPro and Rapture work fine). WAVs appear unaffected.
When playing a VST, crackle/pop plays with it, sample error?
Crackle doesn't show up in the bus.
Using a Scarlett 2i4 1st Gen as a preamp in SONAR Plat. Used to run everything fine, but noticed trouble after the win 10 update.
 
I've uninstalled/reinstalled the sound drivers,
Messed with buffer sizes (low gets worse crackle, going higher still has it.)
Uninstalled/Reinstalled XLN and Kontakt.
Switched from ASIO to MME and WDM only for the quality to get WORSE. 
 
Looked all over the internet and found little on how to deal with the problem.
 
Thanks, 
Cable
 

Run This to see if your having DPC issues. 
http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon
 
For sure you will use ASIO driver. Make sure that is all that is being used by Sonar in the Preferences Audio dialog. 
You should be having no issues with your set up and be able to run at a medium to lower buffer like 256. 
 
I would also disable your HDMI audio driver in Device manager as that is known to cause problems for many. 
For sure while your testing shut off your wi fi as that's another culprit for people. 
 
 

@Cactus
Ran the check and everything was fine.
Disabling Wi-fi didn't do it either.
 
Addictive Keys, Addictive Drums 2, and Kontakt 5 still have the crackles.

Just tested exporting a track from a crackley VST and the result was clean audio. I'm stumped , could the issue be that the SONAR workload is not well distributed across the 8 CPUs? I only hit about 10% CPU usage, and about 40-70% Memory depending on the project.
 
Also, my ASIO control panel only allows me to go up at certain intervals (256, 512, 1024),
My SONAR mixing latency bar is grayed out and reads:
Buffer Size 5.8 msec, 256 samples
 
Reported Latencies
Input: 15.0 msec, 660 samples
Output: 15.0 msec, 660 samples
Total Roundtrip: 29.9 msec, 1320 samples
 
Is all this good?

The problem is that something is interrupting the stream of data to your audio interface. The crackles are not happening internally in Sonar, they happen because the audio interface waits for a fraction of a second for more data to feed the DA converter.
 
So, because Dimension Pro and Rapture work fine, but the two others not, let's think about the difference: XLN and Kontakt use HUGE sample sets, so big they will typically not load all the way into RAM. This means that it's somewhat likely that accessing the sample sets on whatever drive they're on, is keeping the sound card driver from feeding the interface.
 
What SATA driver are you using? Are the samples on the C: drive?
 
R

I do not know if it's the same with you, but here, with Sonar Platinum, all natively 32-bit VST generate crackles. In this case, the only solution I found was to create a 64-bit version using JBridge.

eikelbijter
What SATA driver are you using? Are the samples on the C: drive?

The data flow makes sense, I'm using the C: Drive. Should I put them on one of External HDs?
 

rogeriodec
...the only solution I found was to create a 64-bit version using JBridge.

How'd you go about doing that?

Are the offending VST's 32 bit? 

Do you use f.lux by any chance? It has been the cause of many unexplained crackles among those who work with audio on PC's.

If it's only started happening since the Windows update, try uninstalling/re-installing your audio drivers.
 
You might want to re-install your graphics driver too. I had the same issue, and it was the re-installation of the graphics driver that fixed it.