I just installed SONAR X3 Producer and I'm really stymied by this. I'm using a Mackie mixing board routed to the line-in jack on the back of my computer. The input for all my tracks is "Stereo Line In (ITD High Definition Audio ...)". The tracks are output directly to Master, and Master Out is to "Speakers/Headphones (IDT High ...)". 
 
When I play a track the Master volume meter lights up and I hear the track through the headphones/speakers. But when I'm recording onto a track I hear nothing in the headphones/speakers.  The volume meter on the track lights up, and the audio is successfully recorded on the track, but I hear nothing. 
 
If I turn Input Echo to "On," then I hear the input but with a substantial delay. The delay gets shorter as I lower the mixing latency but of course the lowest it goes is 30 msec so that's no help. 
 
I'm running Windows 8.1. My sound card is Beats Audio which HP apparently thinks is pretty good since they stamped the Beats logo on the chassis. I never had this problem using SONAR X1 Studio on my old computer, so I don't have a clue.
 
How do I fix this?
 
Thanks,
John
 
I had this posted in the wrong area before. If it helps you can view the posts in that thread here: http://forum.cakewalk.com/SONAR-X3-Producer-LineIn-will-not-go-to-speakers-m3061211.aspx
 

Input Echo "ON" is correct.  The problem you are experiencing is latency.  It is working but your soundcard/CPU can't process the audio fast enough to record it and output it.  That is why you are hearing a delay.  It is further exacerbated if you have effect on any of the tracks, particularly some limiters and some reverbs (anything with a look ahead function).  You can press the E-key to temporarily disable all the effects and see if the latency improves.
 
Using the onboard soundcard will not give you good results.  Almost everyone here uses a dedicated audio interface to input audio (and/or midi) into the computer and output audio to speakers or headphones.
 
Depending on your needs they can range from a couple hundred dollars and up.  There are numerous threads in the hardware section of the forum discussing interfaces.
 
Also, you should post your system specs like I (and many others) have in my sig so that we can see if you have some specific hardware conflict that could be occurring.
 
 

Thanks, Dave.  My computer is a new HP ENVY 700 series, with a 4th Gen i7 quad core processor, 12GB of Ram and a solid state drive so processing shouldn't be a problem. The onboard audio card is 'beatsaudio'. My old computer had a stock audio card and while I did experience dropouts a lot (running SONAR X1 Studio), I rarely if ever had a latency problem; and as far as I call I never had "Echo" turned on. Does that square with your experience? Could it be a bug in Windows 8.1? 
 
I appreciate the idea of a dedicated audio interface but I'd hate to spend hundreds of dollars or more not knowing if it will solve my problem. Especially since the old computer worked adequately with a stock sound card. Here are the specifics on my computer:
 
Operating systemWindows 8.1 64
Processor 4th generation Intel® Core™ i7-4770K processor quad-core[3.5GHz,8MB Shared Cache]
Keyboard and Mouse HP USB keyboard and optical mouse with volume control
Memory 12GB DDR3-1600MHz [2 DIMM ]
Hard drive 256GB Solid state drive
Office software Microsoft Office Trial
Primary optical drive SuperMulti DVD Burner Productivity ports
15-in-1 Multi-slot Media Card Reader, 6 USB Ports (Front/Top), Audio [Front 4USB2.0, Top 2USB3.0]
Sound Card Integrated Sound, Envy Audio; Beats Audio
Networking Premium Wireless-N LAN card and Bluetooth(R )(2x2)
Power Supply 460W Power supply
 
There's gotta be some way to achieve this basic functionality with the system I have right now. :- (  To make matters more difficult, Cakewalk has been closed for the last 7 days at least. Do you know why?
 
- John

Just to give you more to work on, when I go into Sound/Recording/Stereo Mix Properties/Listen and check "Listen to this device," then -- regardless of whether I select "Default Playback Device," or "Speakers/Headphones (IDT High ...)" -- I get a weird slap-delay on the audio tracks already in  the timeline; but I still don't hear anything coming through the line-in jack from my Mackie mixer.  ???
 
I'm strangely hopeful that there's some little setting somewhere that will make evrerything suddenly work the way  it should.
 
Thanks,
John

I'm hoping that it's not a computer or OS-based problem because, while I still have 5 days left in which I can get a refund on this computer, I'd hate to have to go through all that. Please let me know if we can categorically rule out a computer or OS-based possible cause of my problem.
 
Thanks!
John

I just re-installed my SONAR X1 Studio and I have the same problem. Which makes me think that maybe what we're dealing with is an incompatibility with Windows 8.1. Especially since when I was registering it, Windows 8.1 was not one of the choices in the Platform drop-down, only Windows 8 was there. 
 
What are your thoughts on that?
 
Also, does anyone know why Cakewalk has been AWOL for the last week at least?

Johnny, you've invested a lot of money into a pretty powerful pc, so please don't cripple it's capabilities by trying to run Sonar on an onboard chip which probably costs a few cents to manufacture.
 
It is definitely the weakest point in your entire system - you will notice a huge difference when running on a dedicated audio interface.

Aside from the fact that I agree with the people here saying that you need to invest in a good audio interface, I think that you are not using ASIO, maybe?
If you did not install ASIO4ALL you will most likely use the WDM drivers, which have a fairly high latency. As far as I know, no built-in audio interface has ASIO drivers.
 
install ASIO4ALL, then set SONAR to use ASIO instead of WDM. That normally should lower your latency a lot.

"Echo on" is the only way I know of to monitor while recording through sonar - it had to have been on in X1.
 
Did you run the installation of X3 (or X1 for that matter) as administrator (not just from an admin account)?  That could be contributing to the problem.
 
Also, your PC may have come with "Bloatware".  There is a program called LatencyMon (I think that's the name) that will tell you whether or not you have latency spikes (and what might be causing them).
 
Also, have you tried disabling you wifi card - many times those will interfere with audio.
 
You can try AISO4ALL as well, but it may not work (it doesn't with some systems.)
 
Again, though, your weak link is an audio interface and it will solve your issues if you buy one that will do what you want it to do.  If you think it is a risk buying an interface, you can get one and return it if it doesn't work (you might be upfront with the store about what you are going to do or go with an on-line retailer that has a good return policy.)

johnnyc323
Thanks, Dave.  My computer is a new HP ENVY 700 series, with a 4th Gen i7 quad core processor, 12GB of Ram and a solid state drive so processing shouldn't be a problem. The onboard audio card is 'beatsaudio'. My old computer had a stock audio card and while I did experience dropouts a lot (running SONAR X1 Studio), I rarely if ever had a latency problem; and as far as I call I never had "Echo" turned on. Does that square with your experience? Could it be a bug in Windows 8.1? 
 
I appreciate the idea of a dedicated audio interface but I'd hate to spend hundreds of dollars or more not knowing if it will solve my problem. Especially since the old computer worked adequately with a stock sound card. Here are the specifics on my computer:

 
The problem is not with your computer or Sonar. The dropouts you experienced before were symptoms of the same issue. Also, it may be a factor that plug-ins have become more CPU-hungry, so today's plugs will stress out a computer more than previous ones.
 
On-board sound cards are designed for gaming, VOIP, etc. The issue is more the drivers than the card itself, which ASIO4ALL attempts to address. However, it is a workaround where users have mixed results. I wouldn't recommend it.
 
What you want is an audio interface that supports the ASIO and/or WDM/KS protocol. ASIO is usually the safest bet because there are different "flavors" of WDM, some of which are better than others. What I do with interfaces is run ASIO but also test WDM performance. If WDM gives equivalent performance, great...that means I can aggregate interfaces easily, which is difficult to do with ASIO.
 
Your computer is fine, but you've essentially done the equivalent of buying a Porsche with a governor on the motor that won't let you get past 1,000RPM. You can buy a quality ASIO-compatible interface for under $150 and your recording life will improve dramatically.