rbecker: That is indeed interesting!
Which updates were they?
...and I wonder what they may have addressed relative to a program perfoming something like a mix down every time a soft synth is inserted into a project....
 
Thanks!!!

musec03
rbecker: That is indeed interesting!
Which updates were they?
...and I wonder what they may have addressed relative to a program perfoming something like a mix down every time a soft synth is inserted into a project....
 
Thanks!!!

I am not sure how to answer as to "What updates...", but I downloaded Producer from Cakewalk just a couple days ago, so I assume it is the latest and greatest, as opposed to a disk that was sitting on a shelf somewhere for several months.

I'm sorry rbecker... it wasn't you who reported this...

Howdy ...the windows updates you mentioned ...were they the latest from MS?

Screens going white tells me that this could be something to do with a graphics card. Graphics cards have priority status in a PC. I have read some reports of gitters happening to in the screens. I myself have a Nvidia, and I have heard all sorts of stories about graphic card issues with DAW's. Drive upgrades for graphics cards can be a real nightmare too. I do not get any delays with synths, but I was getting crashes for a while opening and closing pro channel. That seems to have corrected itself after I reformated my pc. Not sure about this either, but I am very careful about 3 party plug ins. Then there are many that only work with 32 bit, so check that as well. You can try plug in manager and disable plug ins that do not belong. Check your video card settings. Then another issue can arise from having multiply sound card drivers happening. I for instance use synths with a different sound card than my break out box, so make sure you have all that properly adjusted. It might be trying to communicate through another driver as you enter the synth, and the graphics card doing something causing the white screens. I don't have a fix, but have experienced similar things that seemed to sort out when properly adjusted. One last thing I have seen happen was when I had several different bit rates goign on I experienced some wierd issues. Like if one track is or was 48000, and some others 44100 etc..I have had to scrap some templates and get all that flowing better.
 

rbecker
...I downloaded Producer from Cakewalk just a couple days ago, so I assume it is the latest and greatest, as opposed to a disk that was sitting on a shelf somewhere for several months.

 
The download does not include the X2a update, which needs to be installed afterwards.

I just downloaded, installed latest Win7 updates plus latest nVidia video card update ...no improvement for soft synths....

Thanks all for the follow up.  I am going to try a couple of things and call Support if no result.  Will let you know if I find anything.
PS...I have all the latest Windows updates so I dont think that is it.
John

I only have a slight delay when adding softsynths and the OP's computer is a lot newer than my old Quad2Core. I have a graphics card, but its old too. 
 
What is your computer's rating on the Windows Experience Index? (Computer-Properties). Mine is 5.7 because of the graphics card, but my CPU and RAM are rated 7.1. That might shed some light on the bottleneck. 
 
I'd also suggest you run a full antivirus/malware scan, memory test and disk scan. This sounds like a hardware issue to me and not a Sonar issue. 
 
In Sonar, do you have Use Multiprocessing Engine and use MMCSS checked in Preferences - Audio - Playback and Recording? If not, you should. Do you have Read and Write Caching enabled in Sync and Caching? Those should also be checked. 
 
EDIT: I did notice that when I add Dimension Pro, there is a slight delay (no white screen though) and it does say "Processing Tracks" in the Sonar display. Maybe that's just a funky way of saying "Loading" when its loading the softsynth. I turned off AutoSave and it still does it.
 
 

Are you inserting the soft synth while the transport is active i.e. playing?