Latency problems with a good-spec PC.

Hi! Although i have a PC with, what I consider, good hardware, I have a problem with latency. I do run some cpu demanding vst's like Nexus2, Trilian and Omnisphere, but I think it gets unbearable quite fast. This is my setup: Intel i7 2600, Asus P8P67 Deluxe motherboard, 16 GB 1600MHz Corsair RAM (4x4GB), SSD as a system disk and ordinary SATA's for the remaining storage. 64bit Windows 7, VS-100, 64bit Sonar X1 Expanded, A-800 Pro. With this setup I can only do maybe 10 to 15 tracks and 5 - 10 vst's. After this, the time from playing a note on the keyboard till I hear it playing is up to half a second. From any vst. Is this normal? I run the ASIO drivers for the VS-100 with the ASIO latency setting at 2. If anyone have a few pointers to very important settings for Sonar, Windows,VS-100 or the A-800, I'd be happy to try them out. Maybe there are some areas like buffering, dithering and quality settings i should know about.(I really suck in that department.) If a better setup is required to make bigger projects, what setup would you recommend? I am not talking about a Hans Zimmer kind of tracklist, but a fairly big project. I am aware of the freeze-function, but I love the freedom of adjusting the tracks without too much hazzle. Am I too demanding?

You must be using Fire Fox. Try a different browser. 

No.... half a second is much too long. Anything past 10 ms or so is too long.

Have you adjusted the latency settings and buffers?  

Try lowering the latency and up the buffers a bit and see if that solves the issue.


NOTE: 10 to 15 tracks is not a big project. I normally run 10 to 15 tracks all the time on a DAW with lessor stats. 

The think that DID catch my attention however is the number of VST's you are running in the project. 5 to 10 synths, especially the big ones will suck the processing power right out of the hardware. I know I can easily run a number of synths on my machine but I don't.  When I am satisfied with a synth track I immediately convert it to audio and shut the synth off, archive it and hide it. 

I'm thinking that sheer number of synths, all running in real time, processing the data, is the cause of the latency. 

I would suggest one of 2 things... maybe 3.

1. Freeze the synths: this converts the outputs to wave audio and shuts the synths off temporarily. 

2. Bounce to Track: This converts the output to audio (like freeze) and then you need to manually shut the synth off and then you can archive it and hide the track.

3. If you feel gutsy, you can process the audio and convert to audio and this deletes the synth. 

The result of any of these actions is that the track becomes audio which the soundcard is better able to handle. 

Just try freezing all the tracks to start with, and then hit play. Leave one synth active so you can test the latency from key press to hearing the sound. 

Two things affect audio latency:
-ASIO buffer size
-Latent plugins
 
Set the audio interface's ASIO buffer size to the smallest size to minimize latency (especially important if you're playing/monitoring in realtime thru software based EFX/processing).  The machine has to be able to sustain the load.  Raising the ASIO buffer size mitigates CPU load... at the expense of greater latency.
 
If you've inserted a latent plugin/s anywhere in the project, Sonar's automatic plugin delay compensation (PDC) will delay all other tracks to maintain sample-accurate sync. 
You can temporarily disable PDC in Sonar by clicking on the PDC button in the Control Bar.  If you do this and the latency goes away... the the issue is a latent plugin/s.  You can disable PDC when tracking... and switch it back on for mixing.
 
 
 

I tried the smallest amount of ASIO buffersize, but the latency was still present.

 
Then the issue has to be a latent plugin/s...  
There is no other source of latency.