I've tried and tried to play along with the metronome and get my events in time with the tempo of the track but what I think is correct is always too soon.  one would think it would be the other way around considering. But yeah! I've stuck some kick drum hits on all the quarters and when I play it back with some other drum elements that are on the grid, the hits are always at least a 16th too soon. I can't record any piano or anything on the fly without having to quantize or manually align the events on the grid to make it sound right. 

I suppose I couldn't input quantize to remedy this but I don't really want to do that. When I have, it just ruins the performance. I can get away with that with some instruments but piano and the such is just impossible.

I've looked at some of the midi preferences to see if there is something to change. Although, I'm just not too familiar with what some of them mean. What does Nudge do? It was default to 10 and I changed it to 0 just to see if that had something to do with it but I don't see any difference. I've tried everything I can think of to see what's going on here. I've used the metronome along with some aligned grid elements. Both the metronome and the grid elements sound in tempo with each other. But for whatever reason if I play along with it, everything is too soon. When I look at the step sequencer, every event is equally too soon. And when I play it back, it sounds too soon. Can this be adjusted or something? One would think the time it takes for the sound of the metronome to reach the ear, then play a note on the keyboard that the events would lag. But that isn't the case here. Weird! 

I notice the same thing.  I was always assuming that my timing was the problem.  I cannot say for sure that i specifically noticed it happening with any hardware or software change, so I just live with it. 

I usually select all the midi notes and nudge 6-10 or so ticks and that seems to do the trick.   

BTW....nudge moves the selected midi note left or right a certain number of midi ticks that you can define.  I just use the defaults

I'm not sure I understand correctly.  Nudge only effects selected midi events? Can you give me an example of how to use nudge and why? This probably isn't anything that effects my situation so I'll just put it back on 10 and move on.

There has to be some sort of compensation going on.

Thanks!

I submitted a ticket to technical support. I'll find out what they say and get back with you.

I've had that since 8.5 (I believe): MIDI events are recorded about a 32th too early. Which means overcompensation at some point.
I never really got around those MIDI-Settings ("midi latency compensation?") to correct this behavior.

Using an Edirol FA-66 audio interface by the way ...

I always Quantize or move, or delay every single MIDI-track.

But this is definitely not the way to go. Please keep us posted!

This is what they told me and it didn't do a thing to improve my situation at all!

Click Edit | Preferences and select the Playback and Recording Section from the left-hand column. Set your Driver Mode to ASIO, and click Apply.

Next, select the Devices section:

Make sure your MOTU is selected under both inputs and outputs. If it appears grayed out, deselect all drivers, in both inputs and outputs, then select the MOTU device. If changes are made, click Apply.

NOTE: MOTU also provides very reliable WDM drivers. If you experience problems in ASIO Driver Mode, you may want to consider using WDM as an alternative.

Select the Driver Settings section:

Make sure one of your MOTU card drivers is selected as Playback Timing master. For most users you'll want to set this to be either MAIN or Analog outputs 1/2. Click OK.

Finally, all audio playback will occur from the MOTU device itself. Make sure you have your speakers or headphones connected to its outputs.
 
On the Sync and Caching tab of the Preferences make sure the "Use ASIO Reported Latency" box is checked. There is also a manual offset here which you would not typically touch, but can be used to manually adjust the delay compensation.
 

Where is the adjust delay compensation knob? Why would I use anything other than ASIO drivers? Is Changing them to WDM going to fix the delay compensation?  I'm going to keep at it. Hopefully someone in the forum knows the trick and will post a reply!

Be aware of timestamping, and that ASIO and VST are timed differently than WDM MIDI and audio (using different timing calls and timebases/clocks  in Windows), which may sometimes raise issues which changing the "ignore timestamps" setting in Sonar may not resolve (or may only worsen).

^^^^^^^ 
Perhaps a Sonar developer with more intimate knowledge on this subject would be so kind as to offer comment? 

These links may be of interest: 

http://www.eigenzone.org/2012/12/04/midi-jitter 

http://earthvegaconnectio...ditest/developers.html 

http://www.tim-carter.com...enuId=22&ItemId=10 

OK, this is what I stumbled on. I was given some things to look into by tech support.  But, nothing really made any difference. However, I discovered under Synchronization  Full Chase Lock, there is a field called (Best When Chasing to Midi Time Code) That's what you want to adjust! Mine was at 0, so I cranked it up to 200 and wow, way over shot the markers! I was almost a 1/4 measure off. So I pulled it back in to 75 and that's really close to what I need it to be. I'm basically just in front or behind the landmarks in the time ruler when recording consistently!

You can do a test and see how close you are to nailing some hhat or kick stabs in time with the metronome and see how well you can get close to the landmarks in the piano roll or time ruler. If you are constantly in front or behind I suppose you can adjust that value so that it's more consistent. That will help your quantizing do it's job better and or less often. I suppose it just depends on how you roll! lol

This worked for me, at a setting of 15 ms. That was sufficient to pull the MIDI notes back to where I think they should be, even considering my erratic performance timing.

Thank you, Jackass.

Yes MIDI records too early!
I've been talking to the good people at Cakewalk for years about this.
I save the e-mails and it's interesting how HALF the emails state that the problem MUST be my hardware (it's not) and the other half ADMIT the problem exists.
I received promises that the problem would be fixed in future releases but it never has been fixed.
This is what I believe is happening:
During RECORD only, the Previously recorded audio tracks and the Audio metronome trigger slightly early to compensate for a tiny bit of latency that occurs when recording the new track. I have a feeling that the designers are thinking that if you hear the previous tracks and the audio metronome a fraction-of-a-second-early you're latent-by-a-fraction-of-a-second recording will line up.
So, if you record ONLY audio tracks, you'll never notice any problems.
But if you record a MIDI track, and HEAR the audio tracks or Audio Metronome trigger early, your MIDI tracks will end up planting themselves too early in the recording during playback.
I've noticed, while watching the audio time line, that the AUDIO metronome fires BEFORE the beat during recording but fires ON the beat during regular playback.
Jackasspenguin's suggestion to adjust the TIMING OFFSET is a good work-around. (Thank you!) I set mine at 25 msec and the MIDI tracks land pretty much where they should now.
But... It shouldn't have to be this way.