I'm a total newbie ... and atm a bit overwhelmed :/ I made a new project and painted midi notes in the piano roll view .... it plays fine, like I want, but the indicator moves twice as fast while playing? I.e. when bar 2 has finished playing by the notes I painted and see, the indicator is at bar 4 .. ?

Hi. It sounds like your tempo is double the speed you want. Try changing to half the tempo (red).

All the best.

If you mean the NOW TIME line when you say indicator, it should pretty much hit the notes when they begin processing. In most cases that will be pretty close to when you hear it. If the sound you expect to hear is actually being heard some time after the NOW TIME passes, it suggests a delay compensation issue or a very long processing time. Two measures of difference would be very long indeed. If, as you literally say, the NOW TIME is moving twice as fast, that would indicate that it is going to keep getting further and further ahead as time goes on. So if it is at bar four when you hear bar two (two bars ahead), it will be at bar eight when you hear bar four (four bars ahead) and so on. Other than having an incorrect time signature, something like 2/2 when you intend 2/4  I am at a loss as to how that can be happening.

 
Voon, which 'indicator' are you referring to ?
 

slartabartfast
Other than having an incorrect time signature, something like 2/2 when you intend 2/4  I am at a loss as to how that can be happening.

Maybe this?

Zargg71

slartabartfast
Other than having an incorrect time signature, something like 2/2 when you intend 2/4  I am at a loss as to how that can be happening.

Maybe this?

On further consideration, I do not think so. Even with a time signature screw-up the note you hear playing should be triggered at the passage of the NOW TIME line. It would sound half as fast as you think it is written in piano roll, but it would not displace the NOW relative to the note being played. I think the OP has just incorrectly described the situation, and he meant that there is a more or less constant delay or displacement in the sound relative to the NOW TIME, or the "indicator" is not what I thought. 

Sounds like a latency issue.
 
Voon, what are your computer specs and audio interface?

Sorry, been off a little while ... Here is the indicator I mean. I marked it with orange arrows (I guess this is the "here time"). It's the one moving when you play your thing. I'm trying to copy from my mind/ears the midi "arpeggio" of dune 2's Freakstylez sound, as it shows :)
 

 
What I mean is: The notes playing are not the ones where the indicator is .. it's *exactly* twice ahead. It's in bar 4, when the notes from bar 2 play, it ends on bar 16, even if there's just 8 with notes. it's not tempo ... halving tempo just plays it half as fast audibly .. the indicator is still twice ahead then.
 
My computer is fast ... i7 Hexacore at 4.2 GHz with 32 GB of memory. Sound is clean and crisp, nothing weird and other projects I loaded do not have this problem. Audio interfaces is ASIO4ALL going to my USB connected, active Speakers. I can play anything with ASIO2ALL without issues and no latency for me to hear .. it's quick enough.
 
I'm totally new to Sonar, so I probably clicked soemthing stupid somewhere :/
 
If you want to repeat it: I do nothing else than:
 
1. Start a new project
2. Drag n Drop a VST synth to a new track
3. Open Piano roll (ALT-3) and paint a few notes
 
Also with other synths, the indicator speeds ahead of the drawn notes.
 

Do you use the internal soundcard in your pc, or is it an external one? In any case, I would try to uninstall ASIO4ALL, and use ASIO (if you have an external Audio Interface), or WDM/KS or WASPI (if you use the internal soundcard). I had ASIO4ALL on my laptop (internal soundcard), and it was unstable. I now use WASAPI (Win 10), with better luck. Could be worth a try..
All the best.

Well this is a very long shot, but...
 
SONAR used to have a Tempo Ratio option where you could click on a button and change the tempo by a ratio, like 2X. This was on a tempo toolbar that, as far as I can tell, no longer exists. The option is still listed in preferences (search for "ratio" under Global Bindings) however I'm not sure it does anything. If you had an older version of SONAR, maybe this was migrated...check preferences and unbind it from any keyboard shortcut, if one exists.
 
Another thing you can is put audio, any audio, somewhere in the project as this disabled the tempo ratio option. So if that tempo ratio setting is somehow persisting, that might turn it off.