I hardly had any problems in Windows or Sonar (Sonar user since XL) before November 2016 when suddenly Sonar felt sluggish.
After a lot of hair-tearing I came to the conclusion that MS Win10 (home) autoupdates had added a couple of synchronization services for use with "connected devices" (which I have none), so I turned those off and it was smooth sailing again - for a while ...
It´s been a couple of road bumps after that.
My impression is that quality control before releasing Win10-updates has way lower priority to MS than it used to.
 
Another observation is that after updating to Creators Update processes went from a slightly tweaked 53 to 108 when in idle - and a lot of them can´t be set to deactivated or manual through the control panel services applet or Sysinternals autoruns.
I turned a couple of those services off by modifying the registry, which I don´t recommend unless you´re desperate like me or actually know what you´re doing, and everything works normal - I still have 80+ processes running in idle though.
I searched for the suspected (i.e. it seemed to unnecessarily use CPU when the computer is in idle) service´s name in the registry and changed start type from "2" (non customizable autostart) to "4"(deactivated) - there´s more info available if you do a google search for specific MS-services.
 
I use O&O Shutup to stop MS autoupdates + privacy control, easy to use & seems to work perfectly so far.
For tweaking tips I rely on Tweakhound dot com and Blackviper dot com - lots of info available there.

Also, Logitech Gaming Software (keyboards/mice-drivers + settings etc.) added a service called "Discord" that used 15% CPU in seemingly random bursts.
Nvidia drivers have added 3 telemetry services that I turned off.
 
I hope the professionals and companies like CW can persuade MS to change their "forced updates"-policy, regular users shouldn´t have to mess with their own property just because some guy at MS thinks he has written a cool program or whatever - we pay for a working product.
Maybe there´s a way for CW to sell Windows LTSB through the store to registered CW-users?

Boy, do I wish I had stayed on Win8, I loved that OS .....

Back to the HDMI audio HD driver that you (and I) don't want: yes, I've experienced this and I think the only way to stop it being reinstalled by Windows updates each time after you think you've disabled it, is to turn it off in the BIOS.  You mentioned you were going to try that.  Did you?
 
Also, after you showed the two results from the Latency Monitor early in this thread, you asked if the "red" one was sufficient to cause audio glitches.  I didn't see an explicit answer, but that answer is Yes.
 

Riojazz: The HDMI-driver, if you have a Nvidia card you can try turning digital sound off in the Nvidia control panel.
As far as turning off sound devices in BIOS, Windows still finds them from Windows 7 onwards (at least on my computers), but you can turn them off in the device manager.
 
Edit: I also turned off Windows HD-audio driver (HDAudio.sys) in Sysinternals autoruns, this is not needed for an external soundcard like RME.

I am also experiencing crashes with the latest update. Not sure if the issue is with windows or sonar. At first I thought it was a plugin acting up, but deleted the suspected plugin, and am still having to do quite a few project recoveries. I assume if we submit the crash reports, sonar is aware of the issue, or is their something else we should be doing?
I also plan to see if there are any unused audio devices that I can disable as mentioned.

riojazz
Back to the HDMI audio HD driver that you (and I) don't want: yes, I've experienced this and I think the only way to stop it being reinstalled by Windows updates each time after you think you've disabled it, is to turn it off in the BIOS.  You mentioned you were going to try that.  Did you?
 
Also, after you showed the two results from the Latency Monitor early in this thread, you asked if the "red" one was sufficient to cause audio glitches.  I didn't see an explicit answer, but that answer is Yes.
 

Yes I did turn that off in the BIOS.  But some of the HD audio drivers did return to the playback tab in the Sound Window.  But they are all listed as "Not Plugged In". and the one HD driver that showed up as enabled, did not return.  So I think that solved that part of the problem.

Another thing that I found very useful, is instead of disabling the Ethernet Network adapter, I changed the Windows update setting from Automatic to informing me when a download is pending.  It will not only let me choose exactly when I want to install a Windows update, but it will also tell me what the update is for.
This way I don't have to keep turning on and off the Internet connection every time I use Sonar.

Leee


And it couldn't have come at a worse time, I was just preparing to launch a local advertising campaign for my recording studio/producer work.  I can't have clients coming over to a DAW that keeps crashing. 
And this is the worst kind of problem, it's intermittent and occurs over various configurations.

And I thought it was bad when, working alone, I'd have to stop working, unexpectedly, killing my workflow and the vibe and make me troubleshoot for an hour, chasing down false leads and jumping through hoops.

jonnewyork

Leee


And it couldn't have come at a worse time, I was just preparing to launch a local advertising campaign for my recording studio/producer work.  I can't have clients coming over to a DAW that keeps crashing. 
And this is the worst kind of problem, it's intermittent and occurs over various configurations.

And I thought it was bad when, working alone, I'd have to stop working, unexpectedly, killing my workflow and the vibe and make me troubleshoot for an hour, chasing down false leads and jumping through hoops.

LOL!  Yeah, I guess there is no good time for crashes or errors.  It's a hassle if you're working on your own project, and just plain embarrassing if it happens in front of a client....not to mention any potential money loss because of it.
But, after I disabled those HD audio drivers, I haven't had any issues. 

That might be the solution in my case also.
We'll see what happens.

Please send us the minidumps for any crashes.
I'll post how to find those if needed.