That's the audio engine, Does it go away when you disable it?
First, use headphones to trouble shoot to rule out bad connections elsewhere.
Start from the beginning , Computer off.
Listen to the Octa capture from the headphone jack. You probably will hear nothing there with the computer turned off.
Turn on the computer and play a song with Windows Media or Win Amp.
Open another DAW and listen.
Then open Sonar.
I had this exact problem with a M Audio Fast Track Pro.
It was in the A/D converters or something.
So I ended up using the SPDIF and it was dead quiet.