Hi all
I have an M Audio which has its own control panel when i set the audio driver to ASIO.   If I play say Do Ray ME Fa on my keyboard, it sounds fine.  If i record this however and play it back, it sounds like Im hitting Do Ray Me and Fa nearly all at the same time. 
In the M Audios control aplet, there is a slider named Preferred Buffer Size.  Ive dragged this completely to the left and then right but no joy in getting the notes to record as played.   Am I looking in the wrong area?  Does this problem have anything at all to do with buffers?  
Thanks guys.  

Check that the interface and SONAR are using the same sampling rate and bit depth.

Are you triggering external synths/sound modules or soft synths in Sonar? Also, what is your keyboard model, and is it connected via USB or through your M Audio interface?

Could it be auto quantizing? And perhaps to a large value?

Hi lads
sorry for the delay in replying.  Lets go through the above tips.  
hi Greg.  Im not sure how to check the sampling rate to be honest.
Hi Josh.  These are the built in synths in Sonar.  My trigger KB has no USB connections.  It's very old.  I'm using midi cables.
Hey WD.  I'll need to read up on auto quantize to see how this is set or how to turn it off etc.
Thanks guys :)

If you're just doing a quick test, I'm thinking possibly you're playing notes during the count-in before the transport starts rolling which will result in all the early events being laid down at 1:01:000. Is the now time moving when this happens? A screenshot of what's being recorded in the Piano Roll View might help clarify the problem.
 
 

Hi folks. Quick update.
WDI I think you might have cracked it.  When I press "I" and look at the inspector, there is a column on the right which has more items than the inspector of an audio track.  It has an apreggiator settings panel plus...tadah....an input quantize section.This has a drop down list allowing you to select whole notes, 1/2 notes, 1/4 notes and so on.  I noticed that as I selected smaller fractions the sound improved.  In other words selecting "whole" notes made the problem worse. I have it now set to 1/128 notes and it's made a huge improvement. 
Thanks for the help guys.  As always, grade A forum  :) 
 

Hi Brundle
All sorted now but thank you for getting in touch.  No even when I left the song in for a few seconds before playing the problem was still there.   Yes when i looked in piano roll view the notes were not separate.  They should have looked like looking at the side view of a set of stairs.
But...it seems like the problem was a quantize one and kudos to WDI :) 

You can also turn off input quantize which should play the notes back as played, or at least as close as Sonar can play them back. Midi is always going to be somewhat quantized, I guess, by tick value.

Actually WD, i did try press that "power button" to turn off the quantize and the problem was still there.
By leaving it on and changing the notes settings worked.  Not sure why the on/off thing didnt have any effect but hey..as long as there's a workaround I'm happy