The pops actually register on the individual track and bus meters, sometimes up to +15dBfs!

any tips on how to minimize/ eliminate these?
the one during save is what bugs me more than anything else.  Seems louder than it used to as well, but that just might be my tolerance level is lower :).  

Currently on Sonar 8.5.3, HP xw8600 dual quad core machine, Win7 x64 pro, sonar x32, but this has been an issue with all versions of Sonar since 5 or so on three or four different machines.  Only consistency between machines has been a couple UAD-1 cards.    

any help would be appreciated!

Tip #1: stop playback first!

Seriously, an interruption to the data stream (the cause of the pops) is to be expected when the thread is preempted by the operating system. Stopping playback before reconfiguring the system has been SOP since the dawn of recording.

Of course that works, but that's not really what I'm looking for. 

There's got to be a better solution than that, maybe an aud.ini variable, enabling/ disabling disk caching, something.

I've lived with and been annoyed by this for years.  Since having started branching out to other DAWs, I noticed I'm not experiencing the issue in any other host I've used: PT, Reaper, Live...also, searching this forum yields nobody else complaining about this issue, so hopefully there is a solution.