Sonar X3 playback latency issue (Sound Blaster Z)

I am using Sonar X3e with a new Sound Blaster Z sound card.
 
I am experiencing playback issues with certain instruments (in this case, SoundCenter instruments.) This happened previously before purchasing the sound card. I changed to the ASIO4ALL driver, lowered the ASIO buffer to minimum, and still experienced a slight delay in playback of these instruments. However, the latency issue only occurs during playback -- not when the notes are played on the Piano Roll keyboard or in the synth instrument selection screen.
 
I installed the Sound Blaster Z (a "ZERO-LATENCY" sound card), ensured the ASIO4ALL was selected in Sonar...and I'm still getting latency issues.
 
I had also considered an audio interface as many users have suggested. But my issue is 1) my local electronics store's two interfaces don't match up to what I need and 2) the hundreds of dollars needed to purchase the interface far outweigh the little progress I've made on my projects.
 
I figured the Sound Blaster Z (a "ZERO-LATENCY" sound card) would be an adequate solution to solve my latency issues. I really would like this to work, but I'm afraid spending hundreds of dollars on an audio interface is out of budget for me.
 
Are there any settings I'm missing or any other details? Can anyone offer any further suggestions? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

Grundberg
I figured the Sound Blaster Z (a "ZERO-LATENCY" sound card) would be an adequate solution to solve my latency issues.

 
oh my.  A little research into recording with DAWs would go a long way, Mr. Grundberg.  I hope you find an adequater solution soon!

Ditto all above.
 
"Sound Blaster Z, part of the ultra high-performance Z-Series of Sound Blaster sound cards, is an ideal all-round solution for your PC gaming and entertainment needs.".
 
So not really good a "pro" sound card for recording I suspect. I have to admit though I haven't used this card, but most creative lab cards are not up to the job I'm afraid.
 
FYI zero latency bypasses the DAW, you use the sound cards monitoring software (if supplied) to get a direct output. Anything that goes through processing has some sort of latency. So you could play a track on Sonar with the lead guitar muted, and listen to the lead guitar played live via the sound cards software at the same time. So you would be hearing just the guitar at "zero latency". Sounds great but in practice most people don't bother as the latency is very little (assuming you have adequate hardware and it is correctly configured).

Greeny
Even a cheapo interface that is designed for the job at hand would be better than a soundblaster mate, I dunno what the marketing blurb told you but a soundblaster isn't really upto the job. You don't say what it is you are doing exactly for people to recommend a suitable interface, are you just using midi? or you are recording audio too? if so how many inputs do you need simultaneously, people here will help you if they can!

Okay. I'm gathering the purchase of the Sound Blaster card is not recommended (or necessary).
 
In answer to your question, my project includes no live recording and just MIDI & synths, no audio clips. Very simple work for an amateur composer. In addition, it would seem as though the two audio interfaces offered by my local Best Buy don't support ASIO anyway. Here's the link.
 
The delays are very minimal -- and if anything, if I choose to bypass audio hardware entirely, I suppose I could substitute the offending instrument with a different one (as my library has over 2,000 instruments.
 
But as stated, the delay only happens during playback...not sampling of the instrument through the Instrument Selection Window or on the PRV keyboard.

also, there'll be some on-board soundchip (usually realtek these days) on your mobo, you may get better performance from that via asio4all than the sb
good luck!

THe Scarlet at $149 would be just the ticket. I've used them and they work great. Until you buy one I'd recommend that you increase your buffers (and latency) for playback and make them as small as you can for recording.

Paul P
 
There's an ASIO driver for this card.  I'd use that and forget about ASIO4All (which is just a wrapper for the WDM driver to make it look like ASIO so there's no benefit).  If this is a very recent card, it may take a driver update or two to get it working properly, like most things these days.
 
Interesting that Creative is claiming 1ms latency for the card.
 
FWIW, I have a Soundblaster Titanium HD card with ASIO driver which works absolutely fine with X3P.  I see that 1ms is also claimed for this card but I get nowhere near that.
 
I wouldn't give up on your card just yet.

It would appear, from the center of this page:
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/sound-blaster-z.aspx#features
[ASIO] Pristine audio recordings with ultra low latency
 
Well...that description just like the work I'm/we're doing!
 
The ASIO4ALL driver only allows me down to a buffer of 200 or whatever. And if the Nissan Z has an ASIO driver, I would think that it would've been installed among my others. Strangely, I cannot find that driver in a search.
 
I have the card packaged up and ready to be shipped back. Creative's driver installation/setup wizard is a mess anyway and very convoluted.

You're not doing audio recording. You're doing midi recording and live playing of a software instrument. So the blurb doesn't actually apply to what you're doing. Soundblasters aren't made for this kind of thing, though sometimes you can get lucky. Use its own ASIO driver and see what happens.

"I don't recommend a Sound Blaster for DAW work."  AND " I see that 1ms is also claimed for this card but I get nowhere near that." AND "A little research into recording with DAWs would go a long way, Mr. Grundberg"
 
These 3 comments suggesting against SB, and one suggesting the OP to do just "A little research", when these are the same parroted comments I've noticed over the last 15 years+ in an ever changing line of offerings.  The sentiment made me want to comment just to straighten out what I see as a percentage of people who keep "rubber stamping" to not use SB in a DAW year after year, even though A 2010+ card is so different than say a 1995, 2000, or 2007 card etc.
 
When SB isn't working in a system, I can count on forum members to show up with several one sentence remarks saying not to use SB, when I, and many others are likely getting lower latency on some SB card versions than a lot of posters, likely getting 5-10 times the lowest rate possible they are getting, or yes, I'm saying 1/2 ms one direction, or 1ms round trip.  I've also gotten .8ms before round trip.  I can actually comfortably sing live (without direct monitoring) right into sonar using ANY effect I like, and at 1ms it feels live, with a few tracks.  I'm not trying to start a war.  I want to help, but I think some of the attitudes need to go, and a better understanding is line for newer Sound Blaster cards, on high end systems that are achieving better than some of the ultra pro solutions costing hundreds (not always of course).  Also there's plenty of threads where other cards are having all the same troubles.  It troubles me to read that and was tempted to make a video (may still do it), to show what is possible, except someone in our family is very ill, and I'm switching things around, and having issues with an SSD and little time.  I may still do it as one install on an SSD seems to be getting this with Sonar Producer X3e in 32bit Windows 7 (patched).  I'm sure there are people with configurations that are just not doing the trick, but this is also true of many other cards or USB setups etc.  And I get to easily keep windows sound going, and with a special program can even record youtube videos direct into Sonar, or record Sonar out to windows.  Not to say it can't be done with other cards.   Just saying, SB's can keep up just fine.
 
That said, I have the Sound Blaster Titanium HD, and with Sonar X3e Producer and I'm getting, at best, 1/2 ms each way, by setting to 1ms, and sample rate of 88200 and 96000.  No crackles or pops.  I achieved this at 44100 at some point too, but trying to remember what I did.  This is not with one track and one effect or soft synth either. The problem is understanding, and there are so many settings, I have obtained this several times, even with a good amount of plugins.  But some things alter it, like what plugin I use, or the master clock, or the way it's configured in windows itself, which inputs/outputs and more.  I got 1ms round trip and had several tracks like about 5-8 or so running CA-2A, BBE sonic maximizer, CW TTS 1, EQ's going etc, TH2 Producer, Slate virtual tape, and regular audio on an Asus i7 4770k at 4.5ghz and fast ram, with this SB card.  So it's not a LIE.  But make a few wrong settings, and it all changes.  So people are likely getting different results here.  Maybe I should post my exact settings sometime.  I also can record in WDM/KS at 4-5ms, but prefer starting with ASIO at 1ms and winding up with 4-5 ms, then winding up with 10 or over.
 
As I started getting upwards of 4 or 5 tracks and loaded them up with multiple plugins in each rack, moog synthesizer (Yes, it was going), it was still good, but nearing the point of crackling.  As my project grew, I had to then either freeze, or change to 2ms, then 4ms, and sometimes 5-7ms, but usually not.  Had they been more like pure audio tracks, I could have likely gotten 16 tracks at 1ms-2ms.  Funny thing is when I did a re-install to another SSD and did my best to set things right, I had forgotten some little things, and did NOT get the same results, but close. I'm still tweaking it and struggling, proving to me settings matter!  Yet I still have a backup of the original. The most amazing thing (to me) I did was for fun to remix the original real 24 multi-track (21 tracks) of Madonna's "Lucky Star", and I needed some compressors, a bit of tape saturation emulation (could have used perhaps other plugins, but this worked), a touch of reverb on some things, EQ, BBE other various.  And wanted to make it sound like the original for a game.  At first it sounded really close, then I got lucky, and now it's so close, it sounds so much the same as the original, it's hard to discern differences in mix and dynamics/punch etc.  However I couldn't pull off 1ms with 21 tracks and that much going on. 
 
But 4ms or 5ms and 21 real audio tracks running plus a bunch of FX isn't shabby.  If I'm wrong it was no more than 5 or 7, but I feel fairly sure I was at 4-5.   That is astounding for the ever disliked Sound Blaster.  But what bugs me is it's elusive on large numbers of tracks and that was my complaint, until I saw others getting worse results than me.  I have no problems getting some mixes with 8 or so channels and effects at under 4ms and sometimes 1-2ms round trip.  Sometimes it's true, it does not work out as well.  But the new SB cards, when everything is set right, and you have a beast of a CPU, and use the right drivers, it really can achieve very low latency.  I hope this helps some realize that SB's best cards have some pretty fast DSP hardware on them.  I'm still experimenting and learning, and also curious what I might obtain with a different card.  But not sure if I will beat the results I've obtained.  And not everyone is going to get the exact same results unless they have the exact same hardware or better.  I hope this helps open some people's eyes that SB shouldn't be simply tossed out, but a better look needs to be taken, IMO. 

oceanskate7
When SB isn't working in a system, I can count on forum members to show up with several one sentence remarks saying not to use SB, when I, and many others are likely getting lower latency on some SB card versions than a lot of posters, likely getting 5-10 times the lowest rate possible they are getting, or yes, I'm saying 1/2 ms one direction, or 1ms round trip.  I've also gotten .8ms before round trip. 

 
Early on I had the unpleasant and unfortunate experience of using a soundblaster soundcard on Windows XP.
Soundblasters are great for gaming, listening, exc but if your doing even simple DAW work, a soundblaster can not keep up unless your using ASIO4ALL.
I highly discourage anyone from using ASIO4ALL.
and I don't believe it is just (as you say) a selected handful of "Parroted responses".
ASIO4ALL can become very unstable. trust me I know, ive used in in a pinch.
I also used to suggest it. I don't anymore. ive just seen to many conflicts, problems and issues that lead users in a circle thinking there is something wrong with their system.
 
you want to praise soundblaster and use it...be my guest.

as was stated earlier when you record lower you buffer, when you play back you have to increase your buffer - give it a try and see if it works until you are able to upgrade.

Technically speaking, if an audio interface hooks directly into the PCI bus, it has the same potential performance as Thunderbolt because there are no added USB or FireWire layers. The main problem with sound cards is lack of dedicated ASIO drivers (the variability of ASIO4ALL has been well-documented - sometimes it works fine, sometimes it mugs your system), noise due to inadequate shielding as the card is exposed to the computer's "dirty" insides, less-than-wonderful mic preamps, and limited I/O (e.g., no XLRs, no phantom power).

To all - this thread HAD been from the distant past of about 18 months ago, until a few posts back it had been dredged back up.
 
I sincerely doubt (and hope) that the original poster has been sitting anxiously at his computer, these past 18 months, waiting to see if anyone else would jump in and get things settled for him.
 
Bob Bone
 

You mean the Scarlett didn't line up??? 
My 6i6 was bang on. 
 
I used the audio loopback method. You take a midi snare or ? and bounce it to audio. 
Then you patch output to input ( turn off input echo ) and record it to a new audio track.
 
Zoom way in and compare the offset. Try it in ASIO and WDM mode if your interface supports both. My 6i6 does not support WDM but my Tascam does. Notice in the picture how Session drummers audio lines up perfectly with the midi track,, The ASIO tracks are early,, I used high and low settings , made no difference,,then WDM mode is late.. this is important. You might not even know it's happening. 
Top track Midi
Next Session drummer
next  ASIO normal setting
next  ASIO Highest setting
last track WDM mode
 
 

im simply baffled we are even discussing using a SoundBlaster card