Hi all,
 
Recently I upgraded my computer. I reinstalled Sonar, installed all my VSTs, and opened my projects. Everything seemed fine except when I unfreezed EZDrummer.
 
 
 
This picture shows the problem. Brand new project, two VSTs playing the same midi notes, I freeze the VSTs to show what the audio looks like and you can see one is delayed. It's very noticeable to the ear.
 
I tried upping the "Prepare using X millisecond buffers" option in Preferences -> MIDI but it didn't help.

Any help is appreciated as I really need to get a project done.

A few questions first,
What kind of soundcard are you using ? (Driver mode will help to know as well).
What version of Sonar / and what version of Windows OS ?

Is DFH Sampler a 32-bit VSTi? How many samples late is the rendering, and what is your ASIO buffer size? Bitbridge has a bug that it will add an empty buffer of audio to the front of rendered audio making the audio late by that amount.

Thanks for the replies:
 
My setup: Win 10 64 bit, Sonar Artist (Version 21.13.00). I have  motherboard (just says Realtek) and I'm just using the built in soundcard. I have the "MME (32-bit)" driver set in "Playback and Recording" which had always worked previously for freezing MIDI synths (I do use ASIO but just for recording input). I tried changing to the ASIO driver and refreezing the VST but it did not help.
 
Yes DFH is a 32-bit VST. The delay looks to be about 4400 samples.
 
EDIT:
 
I have just seen the "I'm getting a delay or latency when recording or performing synths" FAQ page in the Documentation. I originally didn't read it closely because it was about "Recording/Performing". I have found the "Mixing latency" slider and that has helped bring the delay down a bit. It may have been that on my old computer I already had that slider down.

I suppose I have some questions:

- Is there a way for Sonar to freeze VSTs with no latency? I understand live playback is going to have latency, but would have thought that conversions to audio would have none.


- Will using the ASIO driver get this latency down even further?

Thank you
 

Yes freezing should have no latency, and won't with 64-bit synths. But the bug in Bitbridge is unavoidable. SONAR uses the buffer size for offline processing, and Bitbridge (the component that allows running 32-bit synths in 64-bit SONAR) adds that extra buffer of audio to the rendering. Your options are:
 
- Temporarily set the buffer to minimum before freezing and ignore the minimal delay that remains (WASAPI Exclusive mode goes down to 3ms and should work with your onboard sound).
 
- Manually correct the latency by trimming the start of the clip and sliding it back after freezing.
 
- Buy the third-party Jbridge that doesn't have this issue ($20 IIRC, and has other benefits).

Do not use MME, use WASAPI exclusive mode for on board audio. This is something new we now have and it's been giving me slightly better results over the other modes available for on board.. But ultimately you will not get rid of that latency until you use a proper interface with ASIO drivers. ( and not asio4all,, WASAPI is better now) 
 

 

Thank you those are both this has helped a huge amount. It's been a while since I configured my setup so I will switch over to using WASAPI. 

For people googling at a later point, I got an "unable to open audio playback device sonar" message when using WASAPI but it looks like it only comes up if you try use ultra low latency.