EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED.
 

Hi . . . welcome to the forum !
What soundcard do you have ? And what are you ASIO or WDM buffer settings ? (in preferences)

Hey DreamForecast . . . welcome to the forum !
What soundcard do you have ? And what are you ASIO or WDM buffer settings ? (in preferences)

Thanks, I have a M-Audio ProFire 610.  It can run in both WDM and ASIO mode, though at the moment I'm running it on ASIO.  I've tried both though, and there seems to be no difference in performance.  

Could it be how your have the plug-ins configured? Some plug-ins can stream samples to reduce RAM usage. They can be reconfigured to load completely into RAM.

scook
Could it be how your have the plug-ins configured? Some plug-ins can stream samples to reduce RAM usage. They can be reconfigured to load completely into RAM.

That sounds like a possible lead.
Is there anyway you'd recommend doing this?  Like, is there a global switch in Sonar X2?  Or do only some plug-ins let you do that? (Kontakt/Omnisphere/Massive?)
Thanks.

The plug-ins are where this config would happen. SONAR does not limit the RAM a plug-in uses.

I don't believe plug-ins necessarily chew up that much RAM. Windows could be swapping some of that into the paging file. Audio tracks do take up a lot of RAM. I don't think that's what's causing the pops and clicks though. What do you have your ASIO buffer size set to? What bit depth and sample rate are you using? Maybe you should try turning off the Windows paging file and see if that makes it use more RAM. 

daveny5
I don't believe plug-ins necessarily chew up that much RAM. Windows could be swapping some of that into the paging file. Audio tracks do take up a lot of RAM. I don't think that's what's causing the pops and clicks though. What do you have your ASIO buffer size set to? What bit depth and sample rate are you using? Maybe you should try turning off the Windows paging file and see if that makes it use more RAM. 

It doesn't actually pop/click too much during playback.  Audio works fine.  It's just the soft-synths.  It's when I'm playing a heavy instrument live (after many heavy instruments have already been added -- usually 25-30 tracks).  I should also mention my latency, usually super low, starts to lag more and more.  My buffer size is currently set to 256 (both in Sonar and in my ASIO panel).  I'm running at 48 kHz / 24 bit. 
 
I'll try the Windows paging file thing sometime.  How bad is it really for your system?  I've read mixed opinions on that.
 
Thanks for your response.

I use those same plugins, and they actually don't use a ton of RAM. I use a lot of Play instances (Eastwest) and they chew up a lot....up to 32GB depending on the project.
 
Do you have any other programs running in the background on Windows? Have you tried updating your M-audio driver to the latest 64bit version?