Hello All,
 
I had an older system with XP, and was in the throes of upgrading to X2 but wanted to wait until I upgraded my system.  My "older system" was a Gateway I purchased in 1999.  Got some miles out of it, but couldn't upgrade it any longer due to changes in motherboards over time etc.  So, I went all in with a new system (specs in signature), upgraded to Win 8-64, and thought the new hotrod would overcome all issues.  And I am still, by all means a beginner. 
I had laid some midi drum tracks and decided to put some guitar tracks in as well, only to find the latent signal all but impossible to play along with the beat.  Felt like it was a full second off and behind the drum tracks.  So, I researched in the forums and found the most likely 2 reasons for latency and messed with the Preferences, buffer size slider, reduced the playback & record I/O to 64 & 128.  Turned off all effects and input echo.  Still no luck.  I was able to activate the MOTU CueMix console and get real-time quitar audio, and fed the drums to the Cuemix console, and recorded, but upon playback, the latency remained.  I also read on here, someone said you could put a negative value in the Record Latency Adjustment (samples) in Sync and Caching Preferences but I couldn't enter a negative value in the Manual Offset, only 0 or higher. 
I'm thinking I need to learn how to edit the beginning of the guitar track to align it with the beginning of the drums to get it all synced and in time.  Seems like a round about way to do this and I may be missing something.  My resources are this forum, YouTube, Sonar X2 Power! and the internet, but have found little in the way of getting pointers on how to address this.  Oh, and I subscribed to the Groove3 All Access Pass as well. 
 
Wow, that was long-winded....any tips?

First think I would do is check the record settings for the driver you are using,, if you don't select ASIO as the driver interface, I'll guarantee you get a minimum of 10ms of latency, which drives you more than "nuts"...I'm running windows 7 on a quad core AMD with X2 Producer and a Phonic Audio Interface If the latency is more than 2-3ms I'd be surprised.
 
Reuben
PS: I'm a guitar player and I had to reinstall W7 because of a HD that died...forgot to chance the driver interface settings and got the same problem you were having.
 
Hopefully that fixes your problem.
 

One of the first things I do when running down latency issues is to bypass all FX using the bypass FX button on the control bar. Some FX add latency.

Using the ASIO definitely did what you said it would.  For some reason, I thought I had tried it before and I wasn't able to select it.  This time, it worked.  Hopefully this works from here on out.  I do remember reading something about ASIO being best for the hardware consoles, but I maybe getting things mixed up.  Thanks Reuben!

Thanks gswitz, will keep that in mind!

Dave,
 
My pleasure...glad I could help! Being a software engineer (retired) always helps me solve software-related issues.
 
Reuben

When tracking audio (e.g., a singer), I have to open the ASIO driver window in Preferences and go way down to 128 or 256.  Then, when mixing, using Melodyne, etc., I go back up to 1024.

Konrad,
 
Interesting...I'm on W7-64 with X2 64 bit and NEVER make adjustments to the buffer settings...If I detect a short lag during the playback of the song (any audio track), I just "nudge" it forward (left) a bit...The lag I usually get is "cockpit" error from trying to move my hands from the keyboard to the fretboard...I refer to this as "mental latency!"...
 
I usually don't record directly into Melodyne, rather record in X2 (need the other backing tracks) then fix up my terrible vocals as a post process then replace
 
Can't understand why you would have to change anything once it is set up! Interesting.
 
Reuben
 
PS: Im actually waiting for the first set of USB3 audio interfaces to come out. You should see virtually no delay because of the buss speed! I already have a USB3 interface for my BD-Recorder and it is anxiously waiting a "new toy!"

Hi,turn off all wifi and power saving stuff on your MB set up.
Turn off the windows UAC,it's terrible on audio driver priority,especially for ASIO.
Change the Windows Power management on CPU 100%.
I have a lower spec and i use 3.5 ms on Focusrite Saffire Pro 24.
Let me know....good luck.

I'm interested to know how windows UAC affects asio drivers especially in Win 8 where it seems you can't turn it off properly without editing the registry.