Latency Issue - Sonar X1 Expanded vs Sonar Professional - X1 Wins!!

Yesterday I experienced a massive problem due to the death of my EM-U 1616m audio interface.  I had to make a quick decision to head to Guitar Center and purchase a new audio/midi interface.  I chose the Presonus AudioBox iTwo.  I've used Presonus equipment before and it seemed to do fine.
 
Back to my issue...I've been running X1 and the first issue with the new AudioBox iTwo was latency problems with my keyboard and vsts.  Enough to just make you crazy.  After spending a few hours tweaking and updating things (upgraded to X1 Expanded with all the current updates) I was finally able to get the piano vst to work with very little latency...exactly what I've been used prior to all of this happening.   
 
Since I was on an upgrade kick I decided to purchase the Sonar Professional upgrade.  Now when I'm in this newer version my latency issues are back.  I have the exact same settings as in X1 Expanded and cannot figure out why it's worse in the newer version.  I have my buffers set at 256.  The sampling rate is at the max the interface will allow (96000).  The latency shown in the Preferences screen show ASIO Reported Latencies - Input 5.1 msec / Output 4.9 msec
 
So my decision right now has to be to continue with X1 Expanded...
 
I would appreciate any thoughts...
Thanks,
Richard
 
Sweetwater Creation Station with Asus P6 Deluxe and Intel i7. 12gb RAM, Windows 7, Garritan Steinway, Superior Drummer, Miroslav Philharmonic, Garritan Jazz Band, Marching Band

Another option would be to bypass all of your Fx by hitting 'e' on your keyboard.
This should tell you roughly what the natural latency is

Default sample rate for new projects is 96000 in both versions? And ASIO buffer size is not changing? How about 64-bit Double Precision Engine; enabled or disabled in both? You might also check the setting of Always Stream Audio Through FX (roughly the equivalent of 'Play FX Tails' in X1).
 
If all else fails, I suggest you start disabling FX one at a time, and see if any particular plugin is driving the load in Professional. But load alone should not cause an increase in latency, just crackling as you described if the CPU cannot keep the buffers filled at the specified settings. So it sounds like maybe some synth plugin is misbehaving at the limit.
 
I suggest you use input monitoring of the Kurzweil's onboard sounds or another hardware synth to know what the latency is apart from any soft synth rendering issues.
 
 
 
 
 

did you migrate prefs/settings from x1?

Good suggestion, Jonesey. There have been a number of cases where SONAR 2015 didn't like the AUD.INI settings it inherited from an earlier release. Especially suspect in this case since the old AUD.INI will have all the E-MU config stuff in it.

brundlefly
Good suggestion, Jonesey. There have been a number of cases where SONAR 2015 didn't like the AUD.INI settings it inherited from an earlier release. Especially suspect in this case since the old AUD.INI will have all the E-MU config stuff in it.

I agree, this is likely. Deleting/re-building the AUD.INI file may be the simplest solution.
 
I've often found that installing a new program will be affected by a "hangover" from an older program if the older program isn't removed. Many pieces of software uninstall older versions as an inherent part of the process of installing a new version.
 
The closer a new installation can come to a truly new installation, the better. IIRC there's a way to open SONAR that deletes the personalizations and starts fresh, but don't remember it offhand.

Craig - I completely concur on the stability of a Sonar environment that is as purely 64-bit with all plugins, as possible, or a completely 32-bit install.  Either of these two setups have worked flawlessly for me, BUT until I had deliberately removed all 3rd-party 32-bit plugins from my 64-bit Sonar search paths, I did have increasingly flaky problems.
 
You might also consider doing a Reset AND a Full Re-scan of plugins, in addition to deleting the Aud.ini file and letting Sonar create a nice shiny new one for you.
 
Bob Bone