difficulty hearing self while recording

marquettE
Im sure I must be missing something quite simple, but I or anyone else in my little studio has trouble hearing themselves in the phones while recording.  The headphone amp is quite cranked, I have dim soloed the backing tracks, meter on recording track is hitting around -12 and it is still difficult to hear.
Once it is recorded, it sounds big and bold, but not while recording.  Makes it hard to "get into it" when you can barely hear it.  Like I said. it must be something simple I am missing.  Any help, appreciated.

this could be phase cancelling issue
 
if you monitor directly via your interface and via sonar, processing latency will cause a small time delay which in turn causes a phase shift; so when listening to both signals, signals are summed, but due to phase shift, cancel out a lot ... hence it sounds thin during recording, but full and big when played back (only one signal)...
 
always monitor only via one single path - either use direct monitoring via the interface (if you record with FX from stomp boxes etc and don't need FX from Sonar) or just via Sonar (if you have low latency that allows you to do this without compromising on timing and feel of the performance) ...