dotonemanband
Trying to create a drum track ... when I press on the keyboard the sound is slightly delayed. Creates a problem to play along with the metronome.

Now THAT sounds like a latency issue.  But it probably still wouldn't explain the metronome  not  syncing to already recorded audio tracks.
 
Another thing... if you're using really cpu intensive fx like an amp simulator or ozone, or softsynths, for troubleshooting purposes, I'd recommend you freeze or mix-down all those tracks.  Multiple instances of an amp simulator could bog playback down really fast.

sounds like a latency problem to me.......try to increase midi buffers

Again ... it sounds like a latency issue.  Try recording a track without "monitoring".  If you don't want to try routing as per my earlier suggestion, as a test you can listen to the click through your speakers and play along to it listening to your instrument live and not through Sonar (in 8.5 I leave "echo" off, not sure if it is called the same thing in X3)

I opened a project I recorded a few months ago. Went to an audio track on that older recording and started to record with metronome. Metronome is right on. No problem with latency. And yet with any new recent project, even when I record a few measures with the metronome, when I play back, the metronome is now not in sync to what I just recorded. I did A/B the old recording preferences with the new and everything looks the same. I'm now going to record a drum sequence on the first track and see if I can work with that rather than the metronome. Can't figure it out. Thanks everyone for suggestions.  

Problem now solved. It was a latency adjustment after all like so many were suggesting. I put the slider to 9.0 msec. Preferences-Audio-Driver Settings-Buffer Size Slider (left to fast). Is that a common setting? Seems to work so far. It was suggested to increase midi buffers. How to do that? Would that be needed now? Thanks everyone for putting up with my slower than usual learning curve.

For recording, 9.0ms is fine.
 
Once you've finished tracking and start adding cpu & memory hogging fx, you'll probably need to increase the latency which isn't a problem when you're done with tracking.

Thanks for that explanation Bristol_Jonesey regarding the latency setting. Thanks to everyone else in the forum who helped with this problem I had.

But hold on, That adjustment should have nothing to do with tracks syncing up?  And not only that, That is a preference stting and loading another project would not have changed your preferences. Maybe what was happening is you were recording while having input echo on so somehow playing along to latency, but that still is a bit confusing.  
And the latency slider is not available in ASIO mode, You make that adjustment with your audio interface control panel, So something is still not set up right here. I think your using the wrong timing master , not in ASIO mode and your system has very noticeable latency which you are monitoring. 

Johnny V. The driver mode I'm using is Wasapi. When I've tried Asio in the past for some reason that mode somehow wasn't working. I've used Wasapi since I've had X3 which has been close to a year. I was able to change the latency setting and just randomly picking a faster setting of 9.0msec. For whatever reason, now the metronome is now synced and everything seems ok regarding being able to record. If problems arise again, I'll be back here for. Thanks for input. 

I agree with Johnny - making the latency faster would solve your problem with delay between the keyboard and sound coming from sonar, but it should not affect the metronome.
 
WASAPI drivers for the UA25 might be an issue.  you said ASIO drivers didn't work, but you didn't say why.  ASIO the Roland UA25 should have solid ASIO drivers which work correctly and they would be the preferred ones to use which could be causing your other issues.
 
I would suggest you download the latest drivers for the UA25 from Roland, install them, then change to ASIO driver mode and see if that doesn't solve thing.s