UPDATE:
I am sad to report the following - I uninstalled DR 17, installed v16, re-did the whole project from scratch and the same thing happened. My workflow if it helps:
[list=]
[*]import into bins;
[*]sort metadata, scenes, takes, ...;
[*]create smart bins;
[*]sync audio/video;
[*]start editing in the EDIT page;
[*]3 clips on the timeline, V1, insert 4th clip into V2 (B-roll);
[*]unlink 4th clip, delete it's audio;
[/list]
Problem starts at the last step - as soon as I unlink and delete audio from the 4th clip, playback drops to about 5FPS (Which v16 correctly reports, unlike v17 which reported 22-23FPS at this point).