MORE SOLVED!!
i can disable ASIO4ALL by unselecting all the ASIO4ALL devices in "Audio Devices " in Sonar's preferences.  Once they are all unselected, I can select their regular ASIO counterparts!   It's annoying clicking them all, but it is extremely useful and better than installing and uninstalling ASIO4ALL every time i work on a surround project!   Cheers!
 
 
SOLVED - I recently installed ASIO4ALL so that I can use sonar to surround mix via the onboard sound card's spdif output.  Sonar can see all the outputs and routes them correctly for a surround project via that single spdif (or adat) connection.  But only if I utilize ASIO4ALL.
 
After installing it, I noticed that it sorta took over, and that now my profire 2626 was running via ASIO4all, which is really wdm "wrapped".  It seemed to run solid so I didn't sweat it.
 
The problem arose because the ASIO "panel" of ASIO4ALL has a manual slider for latency- I had to slide it according to the reported latency in >Preferences.    Otherwise, audio is recorded late in the timeline.  Noticeably.  
 
I wish there was a way that I could utilize ASIO4ALL only when I want to.  I'm going to go try and figure that out.  Let me know if you know how.
 
(original)
While recording drums, i noticed that they were consistently behind the rest of the music.  I slid them over and it sounded great.
Next drum session, different drummer,  same problem.
 
Switched to X3, problem gone!?!?
 
Anyone?
 

Is your latency or buffer in preferences different in platinum compared to X3?

Have you checked your latency and buffer settings?  Compare these in X3 with those in Platinum.
 
Kind regards,
 
tecknot

I will do that, but why should that matter?   For 15 years I've used cakewalk and while those setting affect performance, they have never caused audio to be misaligned after recording.

Sorry. The setting I was thinking was latency offset. Check that one.

BlixYZ
While recording drums, i noticed that they were consistently behind the rest of the music.

Is "the rest of the music" also live recordings in the same session? If not, record latency correction might not be enabled or set correctly. In any case, definitely verify all settings in Preferences > Audio are the same between X3 and Platinum, especially that Use ASIO Reported Latency is enabled and shows the same value at a given buffer setting with a matching Manual Offset, if any.
 
 

"rest of the music" is everything recorded on previous days.
I checked the latency settings and it's set to ASIO offset (compensate).
It seemed to stop on it's own.  I like that even less because now i don't know why.  
Who knows when it'll rear it's head.
Any other possibilities?  I appreciate the suggestions.
I finished the work in X3 and  things seemed to normalize.

I wish I had more ideas. I figured that it was the manual offset setting.

Sonar and the audio drivers work together to figure out what the offset should be and as far as I've read and understand it works 99% of the time. 
 
Only time it doesn't seem to work is when someone is trying to record with an onboard card or a Creative PCI card. 
 
Good thing you still have X3 running. 
 
What I'd do is run the loop back test to see what's happening. 
Use a transient track like a kick or snare and loop the audio interface output back to an input and record this track. Make sure input echo is OFF. 
Now put the two tracks side by side and zoom way in and see if the transients line up. They should be perfect. 
If you do this test in both X3 and 2015 it will prove something has gone wrong or changed. 

Some time ago I had a project that was way out of sync. It corrected itself how, why, I have no clue. It has not happened again. It might have been Sonar 8 or 8.5. Its been awhile.
 
I believe on rare occasions PDC can misread things but not often. In that case it did recompute things and it all was in sync from there onwards.