I've been combing forums and the interwebz for days now trying to figure this out, and I'm finally throwing in the towel and asking for help.  The search terms are all to common in other situations to really figure out whats going on.  This is all audio, no midi.
 
I'm using X3.  I've been getting my new studio situation set up, and all is working well except for some problems syncing with my metronome. At first I thought I had completely lost my rhythm!  Which was kind of funny, as I've been out of the business for a while, but I have a percussion degree! lol.
Anyway, I did a lot of troubleshooting to try to get it working right, and eventually had to settle on manually adjusting my Recording Latency Adjustment.  Seemed like it would work, though I was somewhat concerned at my audio-loop back test showing about 1800 samples (about 40ms) off while my control panel shows: "Effective Latency at 44kHz/stereo: 5.8msec".  After trying it out a few times with the new setting (doing most all of my testing with a simple output-to-input loop back), it seemed better.  But, now I'm finding that I have a wide variability in the synchronization of my recording.  Sometimes, the manual delay I entered is perfect, though more often I'm seeing a variability of 5-25ms in where my audio lands. 
 
At first I thought it may have to do with processor load, but changing my buffers from min to max and everywhere in between (in both Sonar and my interface's control panel) seem to hardly affect it at all.  And yes, I would run the wave profiler after every adjustment.  from what I understand that makes sense that it wouldn't matter in the recording timing, even though my computer runs flawlessly at minimum latency, as the wave profiler is supposed to adjust for these.
 
Please guys, help me out :(  there is no way I can get my reputation up and running in the new city I moved to with a random 25ms delay on every cut I make.  I can of course just use a recorded click track, but the metronome sync isnt the issue -- its the recording lag being different EVERY TIME I press record.  --- interestingly, though, it tends to be consistently one of five different amounts of lag, tending to be perfect for my manual adjustment, or about 250, 500, 750, or 1000 samples.  These are consistent values, and the cuts that line up with those delays line up with eachother perfectly.  (add about 1800 to those for the absolute amount of delay I'm getting in a system that should, I thought, be self-adjusting)

Not sure its relevant, but keep in mind I'm showing minimal latency in the preferences menu and no problems with dropouts or processor load.
 
My setup is a Tascam M-164UF (not super pro, I know, but was an affordable multi-input interface and gives me lots of options doubling as a mixer, and is generally very quiet), windows 7 64-bit, 8gb ram and a snappy processor.   I have tried using various driver setups (MME, ASIO4ALL, etc) but none of them seem to function properly for this audio interface other than the WDM.  I have tried just about every combination of toggling 64-bit processing, buffers, mmcss, dc offset removal, sampling rates and bitrates, multiprocessing engine, and im sure a few more.   My recording clock is set to the mic input/output on the Tascam.
 
 
Thanks so much for anyone that even takes the time to read my wall of text!  I'm pulling my hair out over here!
 
-gwen
 
 
 
 
 
 

First uninstall ASIO4All. The M-164UF should have its own ASIO driver, and that's most likely the best driver to use with SONAR.
 
Then download and run the free CEntrance ASIO latency tester, and see what it reports for total Round Trip Latency.  Set your Manual Offset equal to (Centrance Reported RTL - SONAR Reported RTL), and you should be dialed in for perfect record latency compensation at all buffer sizes.
 
If the CEntrance-measured value is way off (or variable), there may be something going on with your USB drivers. If that's the case, you might start by trying a different port.
 
P.S. With all the mucking around, trying different driver modes and settings, you might want to rename/delete your AUD.INI file; SONAR will build a clean one when you restart it:
 
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\SONAR X3 Producer\AUD.INI
 

You can download a 64-bit Windows driver (as well as Mac and 32-bit Windows) here.
 
Also, TASCAM is one of the companies with known audio interface issues if you have ASIO4ALL installed on your computer. It's not enough to disable it; you need to uninstall it.

thank you guys a ton!  i'll uninstall asio4all, get CEntrance for a better value (thank you, that program will be a HUGE time saver) and finally learn about identifying my USB busses and all that.  hopefully this'll work, i'll let you know :)
 
 
gwen

quick question -- would getting usb ports dedicated specifically for my interface, say with a PCI USB card, be a good idea?
 

Whatever onboard USB hubs/ports you already have should be fine. The probability is low that USB is the problem, but it has been known to happen, and I've seen reports in the past of problems being solved by using a different port so I thought I'd mention it. While we're on the subject, one thing you might want to do for good measure is check the port properties, and make sure they're not enabled to turn off with power management.
 
In general, it's a good idea to disable all power management on a DAW. Among other things, it's been my experience that a lot of audio drivers don't wake up properly from sleep/hibernation.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind in this situation and the future as well :)
 
So I got that utility (freaking awesome!), and it's showing roughly the same thing.  The jitter isn't as common, on the reading as it seems to be in sonar, but it wil occasionally show me different readings as well.  I removed every USB device except the mouse and keyboard, and tried a few different ports (I did see a difference in latency's with different ports -- so at the very least I've got a good new trick). 
 
Since I was showing a 30ms measurement latency with a 4.35ms buffer, I decided to try it out on a different computer.  I got almost identical results (about 7 samples different).  The other computer is showing a bit of inconsistency as well.
 
I got this mixer/interface used, as its a discontinued model and can't afford to drop 1500 on an Onyx 1660 or whatever...  sounds like it might be a hardware problem?  =/   Might have to downgrade to a little interface box on the desk for a while.  bummer...

i had this same computer working GREAT with an alesis multimix usb 2.0 a couple years ago (i had to take a break for personal reasons).  It developed some bad buzz so I decided it was time to upgrade to a brand not fraught with problems, like alesis is supposed to be, I was super excited about having a tascam next to my desk... bleh
 

Good job checking out all the variables. Strange that CEntrance is finding so much "hidden" latency. I can't imagine how something would be wrong with the hardware to cause that. You'd think it would have to be a problem with firmware or drivers. But if that's all up to date and compatible with your O/S (Win7?)... I dunno. When Googling for info I found this forum member's signature showing he's using an M-164UF; you might try pinging him:
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Profile/67841/

ha, i can't send PM's yet.  xD  unless by ping you meant something else?