YOU NEED A PROPER AUDIO INTERFACE! end of story...
There is probably more threads started here by people with your issue than any other issue ever raised here on the forum,, and this goes way back in time too. 
You buy a $1,000+ computer and spend $200+ on a DAW and then don't buy the only important component??
The audio Drivers are the heart of a DAW recording set up. They are actually more important than the hardware itself.
Those drivers are what give the system stability. They also solve the latency and timing clock issue.
Not only will you hear the latency, Your tracks will never be in sync. Been there done that! Digital audio is not just the conversion of analog to digiital,, it's complicated,, do you really want to use a $5 MOBO chip to achive this??
 
Reason I say this is my very first post here was a about the same as yours, Mine was the infamous Sound Blaster audio card  which 1,000 of gamers gave the big thumbs up to.  I paid $300 for it... But It never worked for audio.
( I also tried ASIO4all don't bother)
Start shopping.

> My sound card is Beats Audio which HP apparently thinks is pretty good since they stamped the Beats logo on the chassis.
 
Sorry this is just a cheapo branded thing and not good enough for multitrack recording or playback. Fine for playing back files such as mp3's though. Sorry but Cactus is right.
 
There are many interfaces out there (please do your own research here) such as a Scarlett 2i4 for instance.
I'm not sure why you need a refund on your computer, you generally need to buy the interface separately.
And do yourself a big favour use X3 not X1, there is a world of a difference (and I doubt very much there is an incompatibility issue between X1 and Windows 8.1, however please note that X1 is not longer supported). Oh and sorry but ASIO4ALL generally sucks.
 
Sorry but you are going to need to spend a little more money here. You have a formula 1 car driving on 4 balloons rather than 4 good types.
 
Cheers..

(Sorry if I'm repeating things that were already said - I left it overnight before submitting and other posts have come in since then.)
 
Agreed on the audio interface issue in the above posts - a better interface will give you lower latency and probably fewer drop-outs.
 
Just to clarify your problem: is it just that you don't hear the track that you're currently recording, or that you don't hear anything at all whenever you are recording? In other words, if you are recording a second track over a first track, do you hear the first track play back?
 
If so, that is normal operation unless you have Input Echo enabled for the second track (and is why Input Echo exists). The 30ms latency is a limitation imposed by your computer - you might get better results with an ASIO driver (probably via ASIO4ALL), but the best approach here is to get a dedicated audio interface that is designed for low latency use and can give you <10ms latency.
 
If not, that sounds like either a bug with Sonar (unlikely) or a weird incompatibility with your sound chip (more likely). The resolution there would be to try updating the motherboard/sound chip drivers, or, again, buy a new audio interface (preferable).
 

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

 
Yeah, don't do that. When you enable that checkbox, you basically create a loopback in Windows where the output is piped back into the input. You shouldn't need to use that option unless you want to record the output of some other program (eg. recording from YouTube).