A closing note to all of this. 

I think doing a clean install of everything would be optimal. No doubt.  HOWEVER, I'm getting smooth fast and glitch free performance with Windows 8 being installed over top of Vista 64. Keeping the OS clean and optimize has always been an ongoing thing for me here. I had very little bloat on my Vista64 OS and Windows 8 is even snappier using X2. 
X2 program and project load times along with lower latency and evenly spread core usage included. If only SF8 could have been compatible with Win8, I would be very happy. But, it's not. I did find the surprise of having Johnson J-Edit work in Windows 8. That was a deal breaker for me if it didn't work, but it does. The delta 1010 Win7 drivers work great in Win8. Big relief as I really appreciate the sound, low latency and the performance specifications of this older 1010 interface. All in all, a couple user error problems with me getting this going, but I would recommend Windows 8 to others. 

Could someone post a screen cap of the CPU usage, I'm dying to see what even core balance looks like.

+1 I have had an amazing performance with Win 8, although mine was a clean build on a new machine.....

musicroom


A closing note to all of this. 

I think doing a clean install of everything would be optimal. No doubt.  HOWEVER, I'm getting smooth fast and glitch free performance with Windows 8 being installed over top of Vista 64. Keeping the OS clean and optimize has always been an ongoing thing for me here. I had very little bloat on my Vista64 OS and Windows 8 is even snappier using X2. 
X2 program and project load times along with lower latency and evenly spread core usage included. If only SF8 could have been compatible with Win8, I would be very happy. But, it's not. I did find the surprise of having Johnson J-Edit work in Windows 8. That was a deal breaker for me if it didn't work, but it does. The delta 1010 Win7 drivers work great in Win8. Big relief as I really appreciate the sound, low latency and the performance specifications of this older 1010 interface. All in all, a couple user error problems with me getting this going, but I would recommend Windows 8 to others. 

I just wanted to compliment Musicroom for coming back to post that his problem was solved, and how. While I haven't had that problem, now I am forewarned that an unregistered plugin can make the audio cut out if it's on the master bus. I am also relieved to learn Windows 8 and SONAR had nothing to do with this.

I read with anticipation your solved problem, hoping it would be a solution to my similar problem, but alas it is not, as I'm getting actual dropouts from Sonar as soon as I hit play. So, I can't playback anything or work in my software at all right now. Stymied.
Hopefully your soluntion will help others though.

Mark

mwall, your system is almost identical to what I had until recently. That motherboard in particular was notorious for bad DPC spikes that would kill audio. I don't know if anything has changed for Windows 8, but have you done these two BIOS tweaks? 

1. Disable CPU EIST (Speedstep)....just brutal for audio with that board.

2. Disable HPET (High Precision Event Timer), will bring DPCs down even more.

Thanks, emwhy. I will definitely try those things. But the weird thing is it was Sonar was working, though with some quirks, and then just suddenly starting doing this. The only clue I have is that a TH2 amp sim I had in one song suddenly gave me an error that I had to be a registered user to use this plug-in, when it was working before. I put a new instance of the plugin on the song track, and that instance of the plug in worked. Then I recorded vocal tracks. When I came back to the song a couple of days later, all the vocal track I recorded were gone and the immediate dropout started happening. So something happened somewhere to cause this, but I don't know what. I will try those setting in the BIOS and see if it helps. Thanks.

... and sorry for the hijack of the post ... though it was somewhat related, I hope.

Mark

Dude! Emway, your directions seem to have fixed by playback issue! The tracks I recorded still are there, but I'm not getting the immediate dropout problem. Thank you! 

So, now you can mark this as a Double Solved post.

riojazz


I just wanted to compliment Musicroom for coming back to post that his problem was solved, and how. While I haven't had that problem, now I am forewarned that an unregistered plugin can make the audio cut out if it's on the master bus. I am also relieved to learn Windows 8 and SONAR had nothing to do with this.

Thank you riojazz! And mwall, happy to hear we got 2 for the price of 1 in this thread.

Glad I could help and apologies to musicroom for some "light" thread hijacking