Lag--good for golf but not for Sonar

Hi - for folks with laptops, a common issue is that WI-Fi adapters can add giant bunches of latency and cause audio lag, dropouts, crackles, and such.
 
What lots of folks do is to temporarily disable or turn off the Wi-Fi adapter just prior to launching Sonar, then go and ahead and do your Sonar session, then when done with Sonar go back and simply enable or turn on the Wi-Fi adapter again.
 
Some laptops have a little hardware switch on the outside of the chassis, or there is a function key to turn off the adapter. If not, then you can go into Windows Device Manager, locate the Wi-Fi adapter in the listed devices, right click on it, then click 'Disable'.  This will not hurt anything (except you won;t be able to get to the web while it is disabled - which is fine, because you will be in Sonar).  After finishing with Sonar, go back into Device Manager, right-click on the adapter again, and click 'Enable' and all will be just fine.
 
Now, the above is a common thing causing latency in laptops, but it is possible your settings are needing some changes, as well, or instead of the above.
 
Do you have a dedicated audio interface, or are you just using your on-board sound as your audio device in Sonar?
 
IF you are using your on-board sound in Sonar, then this is likely not going to cut it, as they are just not robust enough for the kinds of things Sonar does with sound.  Sonar demands a lot more horsepower than what Windows would need to do to just play back a song.  So, if you are using your on-board sound for your audio device in Sonar, I HIGHLY recommend you consider purchasing a dedicated audio interface instead.  A separate audio interface will take the load off of your CPU for the massive amounts of analog/digital conversion that has to take place for audio streaming in Sonar.
 
IF you already have a dedicated audio interface, then please list your settings for the following: For your audio interface, please list your Sample Rate, and ASIO Buffer Size.  For Sonar, please list: Driver Mode, Sample Rate, Total Roundtrip Latency.  (The Sonar information can be found in Edit>Preferences>Audio>Driver Settings - for Sample Rate and Total Roundtrip Latency, and in Edit>Preferences>Audio>Playback and Recording for Driver Mode).
 
If using a dedicated audio interface, I suggest the following settings, as a reasonable starting point: Audio interface - Sample Rate 44.1 k or 48 k, ASIO Buffer Size of 128.  For Sonar, Driver Mode of ASIO, Sample Rate that matches the one for the audio interface, Record Bit-Depth of 24 bits (you can set the record bit-depth in Edit>Preferences>File>Audio Data).
 
You want to get your Total Roundtrip Latency in Sonar to be around or just under 10 milliseconds.
 
OK - so please review the above and respond, 
 
Bob Bone
 

Well, there are a bunch of USB-connected audio interfaces out there that would fit the bill for hooking up to your laptop for capturing your live performances.  They start at around $150 on up, depending on features.  My current Presonus AudioBox 1818 VSL was something like $500, but has decent converters and 8 mic pre-amps and phantom power.
 
I used to use a laptop with Sonar and a USB-connected audio interface for live capture of performances of the church band, and for gigging, and it was fabulous.  I simply used Velcro to secure the interface to the stand I had the laptop on, and it took no extra space that way.
 
Bob Bone
 

This may be way oversimplifying it, but have you tried hitting either the scroll lock (or pause button - I can't remember which one it is). One of those buttons does a function that puts sonar into a "low resource" mode or something. I did that once accidentally and fought for days trying to figure out why there was a huge delay whenever I 'd hit any of the transport controls and things like the channel meters didn't work right. The buttons toggle the function off and on.
 
 
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it's the Pause key.