I recently picked up a Kontrol S61 and have been running the Komplete Kontrol software needed to take advantage of the keyboard controller. I noticed immediately that I am getting random pops and clicks simply playing single instances of most NI plugs, not even having Sonar open. My setup is a bit old now, first gen i7 (720 i think) with just 6 gB ram. Nonetheless, it doesn`t seem like my demands are that high - and it runs Sonar projects, usually 8-12 tracks with maybe 12 pugs running without much trouble at all. Is it possible that KK interface can be that demanding? I upgraded to Win10 within a day or so of installing KK software, leaving me to wonder if Win10 is the problem?
 
PS - Octa-Capture interface, Win10

I have not noticed any problems but my computer is more powerful. Maybe you need to play with the audio driver settings. They may have returned to defaults when Win 10 updated the driver.

try it in sonar ...and report .... by the way , in stand alone ,be sure to be in asio mode , by default it will try wasapi driver mod ...

I use an iMac these days with... processors and stuff inside. Can't remember what it is actually. I also have a MacBook with just a dual i5 processor inside. Both machines run Komplete Kontroll without any of the issues you describe. As for what your problem may be, I have no idea, but I can at least say that you shouldn't be experiencing that. I would look into your audio drivers. And like Zo says, try it inside Sonar. If that works then you have a configuration issue with KK. Good luck!

I think you have plenty horses under the hood and it's just a midi keyboard so that shouldn't be a problem. New big software and new OS so you have changed your whole world. Keep checking everything is 44.1 or whatever you use and buffer size all that type stuff.  When you get a problem do a Google search and you will get there pretty quick. Are your drivers right are the setting for asio or what ever you use. You just have to chase that stuff around a while. If there is a real problem it will show itself.

So curiously, all is fine running as plugin or multiple plugins inside of Sonar. Now I just have to get Sonar to recognize the S61 as a midi source! Playing thru PC3X with no problems. Of course, using PC3X w KK kind of defeats the purpose - I would have more control loading the individuals synths. KK will be great though with the S61, once I get it recognized.
As far as stand alone, KK does default to WASAPI driver which is useless on my computer, but I noticed that right away and switched to ASIO. WASAPI gives me unusable latency, ASIO giving lots of pops and drops. Win10 auto loads the correct driver from Roland as soon as it sees the device (supposedly), I will check that next!

filtersweep
I recently picked up a Kontrol S61 and have been running the Komplete Kontrol software needed to take advantage of the keyboard controller. I noticed immediately that I am getting random pops and clicks simply playing single instances of most NI plugs, not even having Sonar open. My setup is a bit old now, first gen i7 (720 i think) with just 6 gB ram. Nonetheless, it doesn`t seem like my demands are that high - and it runs Sonar projects, usually 8-12 tracks with maybe 12 pugs running without much trouble at all. Is it possible that KK interface can be that demanding? I upgraded to Win10 within a day or so of installing KK software, leaving me to wonder if Win10 is the problem?
 
PS - Octa-Capture interface, Win10

 
This isn't normal/expected behavior with the Komplete Kontrol S61.
 
6GB RAM (when using VIs) is running a bit lean.
ie:  Superior Drummer full kits can take up to 1.5GB RAM.
Check to make sure you're not creating a "RAM starved" situation... where the machine is hitting the VM swapfile in lieu of real physical RAM.  If that's happening, it'll absolutely kill performance.

In double checking the Roland ASIO driver I noticed it was running at 48 samples. That must have happened when Win10 auto updated the driver. Pushed it back to 192 and all is fine.

filtersweep
In double checking the Roland ASIO driver I noticed it was running at 48 samples. That must have happened when Win10 auto updated the driver. Pushed it back to 192 and all is fine.

Maybe you could add Solved to your topic title. I have the S61 as well and all works fine.

I went through this exact thing a few months ago with my (now retired) AMD music computer. The settings for how to use the CPU makes a HUGE difference. When playing standalone I chose to use all CPU cores. However, for the VST instance configurations, I had to do something that was different from the default and different from the any of the documented "best practices" by native instruments: The system had 4 cores, and I had to allocate 2 core, as opposed to all or 1 (recommended), to Kontakt VSTs for the best performance. I would start by checking the CPU option settings for the VSTs.
 
EDIT: I know you found your answer, but the older-cpu performance problem with Kontakt is common, and I thought I'd share what I learned.