Natural Human playing in the PRV grid.

It looks to me like its variable. Just like it is with humans.  

I agree with John - I think  you are just seeing your own human fluctuation in timing. I have never known anyone to play exactly in time when analysed by a DAW. That variance is a part of expression.
 
On the other hand if the timing was out by precisely the same number of ppq on every note (after syncing an external synth and recording its arpegiator for example) I would be more inclined to investigate.
 
For some more disturbing news, record some vocals and have a look at it in melodyne:)
 

bitman
Here, Saw this on a link at KVR.
Haven't tried it yet but will, as my DAW is making me also look bad in the way you have described.
 
https://expressiveelectro.../midi-latency-analyser

That seems interesting. I will have a try and see. But I am clueless of what it does though . 

Which is better, before or after? Most of my live playing is behind the beat. Egregiously late notes are corrected, but I leave the rest where they lay.

57Gregy
Which is better. before or after? Most of my live playing is behind the beat. Egregiously late notes are corrected, but I leave the rest where they lay.

Kinda depends on the music you're playing. A lot of jazz players (other than me) often tend to lay back a bit, and I will do this sometimes deliberately, for effect; time feel is kind of a personal thing and part of a player's sound and style, interacting with phrasing and dynamics. Rock and funk typically work better with a somewhat stricter feel, but then there are always going to be players who have a much looser feel and sound great with it...
 
I try not to overthink these things any more, having spent too long second-guessing myself and worrying someone would catch on to the fact that I didn't really know what I was doing (as if anyone really does). So I played kind of timidly and without conviction. But at a certain point I just kind of decided, well, here I am, I've been playing this way for a couple of decades, it's not likely to change, but if I'm going to bother playing then people may as well hear me... so I started playing stronger, and everything kind of got better and easier and more fun, so that seemed like the right approach!
 
EDIT: I almost forgot: as the old song has it... 
"T'ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it!"

If all we were looking at is latency it would put the note after the beat. Latency causes a delay. You play the note where you think it belongs, but latency causes a slight delay so it lags behind the beat a bit. Most people can compensate for this so I don't think it's straight forward.
 
When I was a kid I played drums and took lessons. I spent years playing to a metronome and that helps you keep time, but when you're learning it's hard to tell if you're rushing or dragging the beat - that's one thing that an instructor should help you with. If you practice, how much time have you put in with a metronome and instructor? I think that's a nice thing about midi, you don't need an instructor, you can check the prv. Being able to nuance your timing is part of the expressiveness of music.
 
I think there are two questions. The first is does it sound ok? The second is do you want to improve? If you want to improve then practice your timing.
 
I'm an amateur, I'll practice a part until I'm comfortable with it and then I'll record it (and that may require several takes), but I don't check the prv, if it sounds right then it's a take. I do like to improve so I practice and try to get better and over the years that has included working on my timing playing with click tracks and checking the prv.

Are you listening thru headphones or monitors? Don't forget 1ms is about 1ft from the sound source and may account for some of the delay.
 
No, wait. You're ahead of the beat, not behind. Never mind...

tenfoot
 
For some more disturbing news, record some vocals and have a look at it in melodyne:)
 

All your responses have lot of useful information.

Yes its a technical problem. 

I was able to pin point out the issue with the help of Sonar's Record Synth audio.

Was bit occupied. Didn't got time to post it here.

Will post a detailed message. But for now. Yes it is a technical problem as a result of latency. It seems every one will face this issue. But the latency will be very low so its negligible. But if you are recording using your inbuilt sound card, you gotta take a notice of this. You all can face this issue in every DAW.

I agree with some of you guys telling  'if it sounds right, it is right'. That's true that's the only thing that matters. What I have noticed always is that when I play and record it sounds so perfect but when I play back the recorded midi take I notice a bit of unnatural sync. Very minute though. I move the recorded notes a bit towards the grid and it sounds better.

here is what I did.
I recorded a take with synth audio track armed. 
This is what I got



Zoomed in


The audio was 10ms delayed than the midi note.

Then I noticed that My ASIO reported total roundtrip latency is 10.9ms as well




I changed my ASIO buffer size to max.



Now the reported total roundtrip latency is 100.9ms

Now I recorded a take again with synth audio track armed.

Got this



Zoomed In



The audio here was 100ms delayed than the midi note 

So although the midi note got recorded few ms ahead of the beat the audio is where it should be. 
So I can leave the notes there itself right? NO NO NO!!!! BIG NO!

Now I deleted the recorded synth's audio. And recorded it again(only the audio from the pre recorded midi). This will help me know whether the audio will still be delayed than the midi note while playing back the recorded midi.

This is what I got 
For 10ms



For 100ms



As you guys can see. The audio gets played just where the midi notes are without any delay.

What can we conclude from this-

1.While recording if there is latency in roundtrip. There is a latency between audio and midi. We humans will play the notes slightly ahead so that our ears will perceive the audio in sync with the timing of the metronome/other instruments. Yes the audio we hear while we play is  correctly in sync, but inorder to sync the audio we compromise by playing the notes slightly ahead
OR
The DAW records them slightly ahead so that we hear the audio in sync. (I am not sure which case is true but either way we know that the midi is recorded slightly ahead depending on the latency)

2.However while we playback there is no latency between audio and midi and we end up hearing the audio aswell slightly ahead of the beat(if the midi notes are ahead of the beats)

 How can we fix this

1.Move all the midi notes exactly __ms forward(depending on your reported latency)
2.You can also record the audio along with the midi while recording and then keep the audio and delete the midi.(This is not a good idea though as you cant edit the midi notes.  what's the advantage of using midi then)
3.Record the audio along with the midi and then move and align the midi notes straight to the audio transients and go on and delete the audio.

Point 1. will work for me.

But is there someother way to do this much more easily?

brundlefly mentions of having timing offset in preferences. Can that help. May be!

Or may be Bakers can provide us with an potion to override this automatically in sonar. May be we need a Midi Delay Compensation  Guess we will be the first to introduce that. 

I am no expert. Just a lay user wondering of stuffs. If I have noted something technically wrong here please correct me.

Thanks.





 

sharke
This is why I do everything I can to reduce my buffers when recording MIDI. Even if it involves switching off all other synths in the project (and maybe all FX too). If I can get the buffers down to 96 I don't feel any latency at all. There is nothing worse than a slow response. I hate it when playing MIDI keyboards and I hate it when drawing on touchscreens.

That's a good one to point out ... freeze, archive, disable FX, whatever, to get the latency down
 
that BTW is why I still believe in owing also some really good hardware synths ... WYPIWYG

brundlefly
Yes, synth Recording is a good way to check for sync. I was going to suggest simultaneous MIDI-Audio recording from a keyboard synth if you have one (which will also reveal actual audio input latency), but internal Synth Recording is a good alternative. If the MIDI is very early relative to the synth audio, you know something is not right, and interface latency (both MIDI and Audio) is out of the picture.
 
Keep us posted.
 
I have suggested this (often to no avail, unfortunately) in the past, but you might want to try setting IgnoreMIDIInTimeStamps=1 in TTSSEQ.INI
 
P.S. Below is one ancient reference to the functionality of this parameter from a Baker; personally I've never found that it had any effect one way or the other with any of several MIDI interfaces, but then I've never had the kind of timing discrepancy you're encountering, either:
 
     http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/1161

That's something I must try. Will let you know soon. Thanks.

sonarman1
 The only fix everyone suggest is 'QUANTIZE' :O. When I started using daw's I had no idea even about changing buffer size. Latency was way too much that I thought quantize is the only fix.

Quantize is ok if you want to print staff view ... but musically speaking, quantize is never a fix, it's the worst you could do to your recording. Just look at MIDI drum patches you can buy these days, the ones that really sound good are the ones recorded by real drummers and they are not lining up with the grid if you look at them in the piano roll ...
 
 

I think I spoke too soon when I said synth recording takes latency out of the equation. I now recall that I reported early on that synth recording wasn't being compensated for input latency like external audio recordings. The reply I got was essentially that since a soft synth might be driven by live MIDI input and existing MIDI playback at the same time, it's not possible to apply latency compensation to synth recording because of the way the output of existing MIDI is buffered in advance so that synth audio behaves like recorded audio with regard to playback latency.
 
But I think this is a little beside the point because the original screenshot showed MIDI being early vs. the timeline, and by much more than 10ms, which wouldn't be visible at that zoom level. Since synth audio isn't compensated for input latency, we know that synth audio is going to be very late when the buffer is large. But that's a different issue from the relationship of recorded MIDI to the timeline, and this timing isn't evident from your latest screenshots because your timeline is showing milliseconds instead of M:B:T.
 
Since it's impossible to perform normally with a very high buffer, I recommend you go back to the 10ms RTL, and re-check the timing vs. the timeline and metronome, ignoring the slight discrepancy between the MIDI and Audio due to the lack of audio latency compensation.