I'm enjoying this thread now! 

williamcopper
I know exactly which sample is playing when, because I created the sample and the instrument that calls it.    

Actually no, you didn't create the instrument. You assembled a variety of modules created by Native Instruments into a preset. You did not write the code for those modules nor did you write the code for the audio engine.
 
The reason why I know this is because I wrote the original manual for Kontakt. I knew of no William Copper involved with creating any of the core functionality of the instruments, or being involved with any of the people doing the coding.
 
No one knows how you have Preferences set, how you're choosing to stream, and how much memory you've allocated to RAM to allow for near-instantaneous streaming from disk. If you're streaming from disk mostly or exclusively, there are seek times involved and 30 ms actually seems about right. Or maybe you don't have a clue how to set the preferences, or know how to make intelligent tradeoffs to optimize Kontakt's audio engine...not that the problem is even necessarily with Kontakt any more than it is with SONAR.
 
In years of using SONAR with projects of considerable complexity, I've never encountered what you claim to have encountered and I described why I can say that statement with certainty. However I am open-minded, dedicated to fostering improvements, and always open to the possibility that other workflows can uncover issues I would never encounter. If you sincerely want to get to the root of this, give us a recipe to reproduce what you've experienced rather than opaque descriptions. I don't think it's fair to expect us to keep asking question after question to find out information that you should have provided initially.

John
I'm enjoying this thread now! 

Ampfixer always opens the door for Star Wars references...one of his many services to the forum. 

Thanks for all the additional comedy.    To the one comment that might seem to have been helpful to the innocent reader:  "just use Freeze".     Can't you, John, get it that a "Freeze" is a very long process, and undoing the Freeze is even longer.   It takes longer to freeze a simple section of midi data being sent to a fully loaded Kontakt instance than it does to do the Slow, Audible bounce ... much longer.   And then in order to do any work at all on the project (which is entirely midi and Kontakt, remember) you have to UNfreeze and that takes much much longer again.   Another problem with Freeze as implemented in sonar is you are forced to have as many 'frozen audio' tracks as there are VST outputs ... so freeze adds significantly to the organization issues involved in a many-track project.   
 
Even though I can waste days trying to track down why errors happen, I am very concerned with day-after-day speed of work flow.    Rendering midi, to use Cubase's word for it, or Fast bounce of Midi ("Bounce to Tracks, Fast option checked") is a very rapid and useful tool; Freeze is a very slow and useless tool for a system with plenty of memory.  
 
Answering Craig's observation, "I woulda noticed it" ... if you always Render midi the same way, the same options, and use all the rendered audio together, then afaik there will be no time alignment issues.   There MIGHT be, I think there is, some sound differences in the different options for rendering via Bouce to Tracks ... and as I have shown, there is likely to be some time alignment issues in Rendering Midi using the different options, when there should not be such alignment problems .. again, because the entire midi project is a time-exact rendition of music, it should not change depending on how it is rendered, other than by round robin or other randomizations which I've gone to great lengths to indicate are probably not the issue here. 

Uncheck  Browser->Synth(down arrow)->Unload Synths On Disconnect

williamcopper
Thanks for all the additional comedy.    To the one comment that might seem to have been helpful to the innocent reader:  "just use Freeze".     Can't you, John, get it that a "Freeze" is a very long process, and undoing the Freeze is even longer.   It takes longer to freeze a simple section of midi data being sent to a fully loaded Kontakt instance than it does to do the Slow, Audible bounce ... much longer.   And then in order to do any work at all on the project (which is entirely midi and Kontakt, remember) you have to UNfreeze and that takes much much longer again.   Another problem with Freeze as implemented in sonar is you are forced to have as many 'frozen audio' tracks as there are VST outputs ... so freeze adds significantly to the organization issues involved in a many-track project.   
 
Even though I can waste days trying to track down why errors happen, I am very concerned with day-after-day speed of work flow.    Rendering midi, to use Cubase's word for it, or Fast bounce of Midi ("Bounce to Tracks, Fast option checked") is a very rapid and useful tool; Freeze is a very slow and useless tool for a system with plenty of memory.  
 
Answering Craig's observation, "I woulda noticed it" ... if you always Render midi the same way, the same options, and use all the rendered audio together, then afaik there will be no time alignment issues.   There MIGHT be, I think there is, some sound differences in the different options for rendering via Bouce to Tracks ... and as I have shown, there is likely to be some time alignment issues in Rendering Midi using the different options, when there should not be such alignment problems .. again, because the entire midi project is a time-exact rendition of music, it should not change depending on how it is rendered, other than by round robin or other randomizations which I've gone to great lengths to indicate are probably not the issue here. 

Freeze is very fast on my machine. Keep in mind freeze and bounce in Sonar are the same thing. There is a real time freeze and a fast freeze (Fast Bounce). If your freezes are slow you may be using real time not fast bounce. Its an option in the freeze button in the synth rack. Which is in the Browser. 

I don't understand what do you want. Is it
1. Render always should be the same - wrong
2. My renders are different, I want to know why - makes sense, do research, find, tell us.
But it seems it is
3. My renders are different, so go everybody and find why, Cakewalk must do research, why my project renders are different, I have no time to do it, it might be a bug - totally unconstructive.
 

Thanks for the info, shaking my head at CW ... putting preferences in yet another place ... never occurred to me that the little freeze button on the synth might have its own options.     So, yes, I was doing fast freeze, but the little tidbit there about how the tail is handled might be a great thing to have in the render as 'Bounce to Tracks'.  
 
Adq, yes, #2:  my renders are different and I want to know why.    Also, and this has been going on for as long as I've used Sonar, sometimes my final mixdown is not quite the same as what I think i had been working with --- and there have been many posts in this forum over the years saying the same thing.   Many reasons, no doubt ... but this render issue is one of them.    And on the one hand, John says "Freeze and bounce to tracks are the same thing"; on the other hand Adq says "Renders are not always the same".    I do not understand WHY they are not the same, but I certainly agree that they in fact aren't the same.   But once again, if they are NOT THE SAME, then something is guaranteed to be different in a render one way or another than in the same project without a render.     As, once more, in the OP picture --- same line up, but the sound is not the same.   And before anyone says yet again, "variation in Kontakt", for the ninth time:  Render the SAME WAY, the SAME OPTIONS, the SAME MATERIAL, does not vary significantly.  It's always the same.  
 
    I posted comparison audio, 9 seconds, downloadable for comparison.  No one has bothered to do it.   Yes, it's different.   Yes, this is bad.   Probably this is Sonar's fault.  

williamcopper
 And before anyone says yet again, "variation in Kontakt", for the ninth time:  Render the SAME WAY, the SAME OPTIONS, the SAME MATERIAL, does not vary significantly.  It's always the same.  
 

I don't understand it, what does it mean "does not vary significantly"? I can't see this files. Do several renders, few with same settings, few with other, and so on, name it properly, pack it in zip file, and give the direct link to download. But even if there is no difference with same settings, and there is difference with different settings, you can't just render the whole project to find the reason. You must narrow the problem, that is to find the minimum possible project that gives difference. It should be something like one Kontakt instance, minimum effects in Kontakt enabled, one or few midi notes and so on. Then you should try it in other DAWs. And only after that that would or would not be something to talk about.

No, adq, if I did all you specify, sure I'd be a hero.   But that is a hell of a lot of work, and I do try to write music. 
 
Here's yet another aside: because of the asinine way Sonar handles preferences, I try never, ever to use "new project" because that's going to change things on old projects and it's a very unpleasant easter egg hunt to track down all those changes.     One that I know and loathe, just for instance, is "zero controllers when play stops".    Snap settings get screwed up, colors get screwed up.    I'm sure there are work-arounds for all this, but I've learned simply never to create a new project --- anything that is begun is begun as a copy from an older project.    Even then that despised zero controllers somehow gets checked again and again, and the snap magnetism gets reset.