hi everyone, this is something that has just started. when I record with the INPUT ECHO activated I get a delay, when I turn it off it goes away. this is what I've done so far to fix this. thinking it was the sound card M-AUDIO Mobile-pre I used the sound card in my POD HD however the problem persists. i'm wondering if the MANUAL OFFSET which is at 0 would have anything to do with it? I use the input echo mostly on vox so I can have a plug in running, I can record without it but that sucks and never had to before. does anyone have a clue what this could be?
thank you  

I would say that's normal behaviour if your buffers and drivers aren't in order. What driver mode are you using? Are they updated? What have you set your buffers/latency at?
When Input Echo is on you hear the actual sound of the recording including FX, amp sims etc. Without it you hear what's coming from your soundcard.

The delay is caused by your audio interface settings and plug-in compensation. A small about of delay is unavoidable when using input echo. To minimize the delay, run your mobile-pre with as small a mixing latency as you can and avoid using plug-ins that add latency to your project. Some of the plug-ins to avoid are Perfect Space, the LP-64 plugins, TS-64 and any other plug-in that has a look ahead buffer. Generally plug-ins that introduce latency will discuss it in their documentation.

thank you for your answers. this is strange, it's only the ONE PROJECT i'm working on, all the others are fine. weird

Disable all plug-ins (keyboard shortcut "E" in X2, which I assume you are using based on your previous posts). If the delay goes away, there is some plug-in compensation going on. BTW if you are using the X series, this is the wrong forum.

The fact that it's specific to one project suggests that it is indeed plugin delay compensation, as suggested by scook above.
 
I'm guessing the vocal effect you're using is a reverb?
 
There is a trick some people use to get around the latency problem, which is to only monitor the reverb through the computer, not the main vocal. As long as the main vocal isn't delayed the singer won't get confused, and a little lag in the reverb isn't as big a deal.
 
I've never done this myself, but it sounds simple enough. What you do is use your interface's zero-latency monitoring feature to listen to the vocal as it's being performed, and mute the vocal track. You put the reverb on a bus and add a pre-fader send from the vocal track. Now you can hear the reverb, albeit with a slight delay.

P.S. I found this article that may explain it better than I did: http://therecordingrevolution.com/2012/09/24/how-to-record-zero-latency-vocals-with-reverb/
 

Cool trick. Hmmm, I wonder what will happen with guitar rig?? I've never used it because my latency is terrible. Oh well, I still have my pedals.