theres a lag at beginning of song in jukebox

am using a laptop with CW Audio Pro 9 and been trying to solve the problem of the click off at the beginning of a sequence. i added a hi-hat click to tell me when the song starts on the gig, but it doesnt click 1....2....3....4...., it clicks 12....3..........4............. this is real tough to get an idea of the tempo before the song starts. especially when i am to play immediately. i am ending up waiting till the song starts, then i jump in a bar behind. this is not good.

i am using an older laptop but has plenty of speed and memory to handle such a small problem. i have 2 laptops. one with xp and one with 98se. both do the same thing at the start of each sequence.

first off, is there a reason it does this? seems it dont do it if i restart the song, but only when i go from one song to the next.

i am thinking i may need to add an extra bar to the beginning to give it time to stablize before the click starts. though, i now have 420 songs to add a bar at the beginning of each song. i have only used this setup a couple times out on the gig. because of the beginning bar being so unstable, i have not used this setup.

anybody figure out a fix for the staggered click in the first bar?

i'm using an outboard korg ns5r sound module. no sounds are being used in the laptop itself.

i added a bar to the beginning of the faster tunes to stablize the start of the song. seems to cure the problem.

just thought i was missing something that i did to cause the stagger. i have an extra 1-2 seconds of deadspace before the click off. but i can deal with that.

its an older Dell P3 500mhz with 512 ram. running on XP. my other laptop has 98se. i'm running usb port midi 1x1.

would it matter about the soundcard if you are not using internal sounds?

the tracks i'm sequencing are basic DRUMS, BASS, PIANO, and (Strings, Organ, Horns). I am using a track to run a light dimmer pac and a track for a digitech vocalist harmonizer.