Sound card line-in audio latency

I'm actually surprised the latency isn't much more with Creative's Sound Blaster X-Fi as they're not made for pro audio dedicated DAWs. Are you using ASIO4All or the drivers from Creative? Either way, I'm suspecting that it's this audio card that's going to be your problem. You might want to look into getting a good audio interface that's designed for pro audio (recording/playback) and won't give you these headaches.....(i.e check out the Focusrite interfaces).
 
  

TimDale
I'm using the Creative drivers. I have actually ordered a USB Audio interface anyway because my line-in is a little noisy. Hopefully will arrive next week. Although you say I should expect latency I haven't had any until a couple of days ago, after a month of using sonar and over a year of using Cakewalk Home Studio 9 before that, all on the same card.

That's quite impressive on Creative's part.......Sonar is genereally quite demanding in this dept. and for you to be able to use it this far is remarkable. Of course, I'm only going by all the complaints of people using SB audio cards in Sonar and the numerous issues.
Which card did you order?

the x-fi's are terrible for any serious audio.
move to Plan B.

i owned a X-fi card.
i know of what i speak.
 
pure experience,
without the hyperbole

What I have ordered as a experiment is an external USB audio interface by Behringer (stereo in, stereo out). I will see if this solves the problem (by essentially bypassing the sound card).
 

If the issue started happening when you migrated to Sonar, it is definitely due to the deficiency of the Creative Card.  Home Studio 9 was a more primitive program that didn't tax the sound card as much as Sonar does.
 
The Behringer interface is certainly a move in the right direction, but I don't have any experience with it or recall seeing anybody discuss it, so it may or may not get you all the way to where you want to be.

What I have ordered as a experiment is an external USB audio interface by Behringer
 
Oh my. I bet it doesn't come with ASIO drivers either. I have one of those too, it came with a mixer. It works fine for anything but Sonar. I use it for live playback at gigs. It won't solve your problem at all. 
 
And Bat and me are not just being interface snobs,,, my advice comes from wasting years fighting PC audio and the problem all along was poorly written audio drivers. 
There is no solution other than purchasing a proper audio interface with proper ASIO drivers... go ahead and chase your tail for another year.. 
 

Does it make any difference whether the card is set to 48K vs 44.1K, or bit depth 16 or 24?

TimDale
 
> There is no solution other than purchasing a proper audio interface with proper ASIO drivers... 
Can you recommend any (that won't break the bank) ?
 
 

If the inputs/outputs match your needs, I can highly recommend the Focusrite_2i4. Excellent driver support from Focusrite and I got mine for under $150. Check with AudioDeluxe, JRR shop, Sweetwater etc...and see who can offer the best deal.

Okay Slartabartfast, I'll have a go ......
I have a PC with a Creative X-Fi sound card. It has a switchable line-in/mic-in socket, and a line-out socket into which I have plugged my speakers (no surround stuff, just stereo). The PC also has built-in audio (Realtek, on an ASUS motherboard). This provides me with an alternative line-in and line-out (both normally disabled) and a front panel headphone socket, into which I have headphones plugged, configured not to cut off the speakers when plugged in.
Externally I have 3 hardware synths (1 keyboard, 2 rackmount), running through an analogue mixer, giving a stereo out which is plugged into the line-in socket of the soundcard.
This is how my system has been wired since I built this PC two years ago, and on my previous PC for 8 years before that. If I want to just play the keyboard, I listen through the PC speakers, or headphones if other people in the house are asleep. And this has all been fine.  For music composition, I was using Cakewalk Home Studio 9. On this I would control the 3 external synths, and possibly add audio tracks which were samples.  There was no latency (audio delay) in the system, and the midi and audio tracks always lined up fine.
However, this meant I didn't have the option of using VSTs, so I upgraded to Sonar X3. Initially Sonar would hang the PC every time I tried to create or load a project. I upgraded to version X3b and that solved that one.  I initially had some audio delays so followed on-line advice and reduced the size of the ASIO buffer (from within Sonar) from 50ms to 20ms and that solved that one. All was fine for a few weeks, I was able to compose tracks using both VSTs and the external synths, and the audio always lined up.
Then for no readily apparent reason, an audio delay appeared on the external audio. If I plugged headphones into my mixer and also had the PC playing through the speakers, a double hit was noticeable. I measured the delay at 0.25 seconds. Therefore, in Sonar, the only way to get the audio to sound right was to slide the midi events for the external synths 250ms to the left.  The fact that any audio generated in the PC was fine, but the external audio was delayed suggested the latency/delay was only on the line-in socket.  I tried reduced the ASIO buffer further to 10ms but that didn't change anything.  The Sonar properties screen is showing total audio latency of something like 22ms, which would be un-noticable.  I tried updating Sonar again (to version X3e) but all that did was break a couple of my VST plugins.
Right, now ignore Sonar for a moment, as the problem occurs whether Sonar is running or not. I believe the problem to be either in the PC's audio routing or the soundcard. I tested using the PC's onboard sound rather than the Creative sound card: the synths were fed into the on-board line-in socket, and the speakers plugged into the on-board line-out socket. No audio delay. If I used the on-board line, and routed that to the sound card, there was a delay. As a result of this test, I would switch to using the on-board sound, but since it doesn't have ASIO drivers, Sonar doesn't support it. (Yes I know I could switch Sonar to a non-ASIO mode but that doesn't seem to be recommended by people.)
You asked how I was "routing" the audio. From the windows control panel (I'm on Windows 7 btw), I select "Sound", a window appears called "Sound" with tabs labelled Playback, Recording, Sounds and Communication. On the playback tab, the creative speakers are selected as the default output. On the recording tab, the creative line-in is selected as default output, and on its properties page, "listen to this device" is ticked, and the output is selected as "default output device".  I normally had "What U Hear" as the default output device, but switched it to the speakers to rule that out as a cause. It's as simple as that.  That's what makes this incredibly frustrating, as there don't appear to be any fancy audio paths going on here.
As other responders have pointed out, the Creative X-Fi has switchable modes, including "game" mode (which I always have used) and "audio production" mode which has ASIO support and (apparently) low-latency. Switching mode doesn't seem to make any difference.
So that's it, with no Sonar running, and no-other audio software, and with the Windows 7 "sound" control panel routing line-in to line-out (i.e. speakers), there is a 250ms delay between the two, that wasn't there until last month. 250ms doesn't sound a lot, but it's really distracting when just playing music, and makes composition difficult and frustrating. All sound card audio processing (effects, eq, etc) is turned off, before anyone asks.  
Any detail I've missed?
 

Still a lot of unanswered questions, but the description of the symptoms is sufficient to let me make some possibly helpful comments.
 
If you are designing the Windows OS you recognize that 999 out of 1000 users will only be using the audio system to listen to music. They will not care that there is any delay from the time that an audio signal is received somewhere in the computer to the time that it comes out the computer speakers, but they will be very unhappy if the sound is distorted by dropouts. So, since you want them to be able to play their music DVD, use Facebook, check email and run a spreadsheet all at once, you build a humongous audio buffer into the basic audio system. Basic Windows audio is s--l--o--w. And you want to be sure that the average user, not only cannot change the size of that built in buffer, but will not even be able to see it. ASIO, and other low latency drivers are designed to completely bypass the standard Windows audio system and communicate directly with audio applications and the processor (low level access) in order to avoid the latency inherent in the Windows audio system.
 
Onboard audio typically has the same design constraints and uses a higher latency driver to communicate to Windows. But when you put an audio signal into the audio in of your motherboard and listen to audio out of the motherboard you have little delay. The most likely explantation is that your onboard audio chipset is able to do a connection between its own input and output without actually going through the Windows audio system and its big buffer. That feature is called "direct monitoring" or "zero latency monitoring" when it is described as a feature of an audio interface. The routing looks like this:
audio signal>line in>fast on audio chip turnaround>line out.
 
The sound setting in Windows control panel box labled "listen to this device" actually should be labeled "listen to this device using the (slow) standard Windows audio system." So checking that box results in a data routing that looks like:
data from input device>Windows audio system>big hidden buffer>Windows audio system>target output device> target device line out. So if that is how you are routing from your onboard audio to the soundblaster, the hidden buffer we were trying to find is built in to the Windows OS itself. No delay until you try to route from the MB input to the soundblaster using Windows. Message: do NOT check "listen to this device" unless you want to add a lot of latency. The test of input into your MB inputs and output via the soundblaster is just uncovering the built in Windows OS buffer.
 
But if you do not check that "listen to device" box, how will you hear the output? You will not be able to hear it using Windows, but you can still get in and out using a completely separate computer program (more often two programs) that run under windows, like Sonar(1) and an ASIO driver for the soundblaster(2). The routing you want is:
audio signal>Soundblaster line in> ASIO driver>buffers that can be adjusted in size via Sonar>Sonar>CPU for processing with calls to effects and softsynths>Sonar audio track inputs>audio out of Sonar>ASIO driver>Soundblaster>line out of Soundblaster. The Windows standard audio system is not in the routing at all, and you can adjust the ASIO/audio buffers as low as you want so long as your computer can do the processing needed in the time allotted without dropping out.
 
As fireberd says, there can be complications with using multiple audio interfaces even active at the same time, and it certainly makes troubleshooting more difficult. So if clearing the "listen to device" boxes everywhere is not helpful, open an account with administrator priveledges, go into device manager find and disable any audio devices that are not the Soundblaster driver. If you delete the devices they will not stay deleted when you restart, just disable them. If you have an HDMI video output, you will likely find one or more audio devices you did not know you had, which are the video system audio drivers to send sound over the HDMI cable.
 
Then to simplify your test setup, just connect the audio out (not USB, not MIDI connector) from your keyboard directly to the soundblaster line in (not to the mixer), create a new project in Sonar that has only one audio track, (no effects) set its input to the Soundblaster, check input echo in Sonar, set the track output to the soundblaster, and connect the Soundblaster line out to the speakers. Hit a key. The delay you hear is all the delay you can blame on the Soundblaster, the ASIO driver, or Sonar. Keep adjusting the buffer in Sonar lower and lower until you get it short enough or you get crackles.
 
If the system is working in that simple state, start adding things back and testing.