Hey guys....
Thanks for the tips & advice - greatly appreciated!
Yes, have latest drivers for audio hardware.
I'm sure jBridge is running the VSTi - when I go to synth properties and the synth comes up, the bottom of the synth window has a bar for jBridge.
What I DID achieve success with is, I installed the 32-bit version of Sonar X2 (and patched with X2a).
I was able to open the project file that was giving me trouble in x64 directly, and, I had no problems! The CPU bars were going pretty crazy, and there were a couple dropouts during playback, but ZERO CRASHES!!!! Woo-hoo!!
I will try alternate (older) drivers just for the heck of it and see what happens in X2a x64, and make sure BitBridge is off, and see if I can get the 32-bit VSTi's to behave in X2a x64 (and report on that...)
Thanks guys!!!