Everything is going great: recording the new tracks for my band. I opened up a new track for guitar, hit the Record button and find that the guitar sound is delayed from the time I struck the note. 

Why do things like this crop up out of nowhere?

When you record into a new project you just hear it all together in sync.

When you do an overdub, if you are listening to the input echo of a track that is record armed... then you hear the round trip latency.

The only thing you can do is either minimize that latency to an amount that you can play along with or route your monitoring mix outboard on a dsp mixer in your I/O box or a traditional analog mixer.

The first questions are:

Are you monitoring through SONAR in a round trip with the input echo?

What is the sample buffer setting of your audio in/out driver? Can you lower it further?

best regards,
mike

And your audio interface latency is set low between 32-128 (if you're using input monitoring)? Any effects on the track?

Open the software for the PreSonus box and lower the latency in increments until it you can no longer notice the delay (latency). If you go too far you may experience "dropouts" in the audio (crackles and pops) or Sonar may crash. You have a pretty powerful system so you should be able to get it down low enough.

If you do not know how to adjust the latency settings for your interface refer to the interface manual. Should be under audio buffers. If it ends up you can't get it down low enough to get rid of the latency without dropouts there are a few things you can do. First is to optimize your system for audio (google Sonar Optimization). The other is to "Freeze" any software synth tracks and effects on tracks that aren't currently being used to record into (this is in the Sonar manual).

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Wrapping up from a long day and will try your various suggestions tomorrow evening.

Beepster, I do know about latency issues in general, but I have recorded many, many tracks with my Presonus with never an issue. Why would a problem crop up in this one instance?

As an aside, and I guess I will be blackballed for this, but I've been a Cakewalk user since Pro Audio 6. I have spent way too much money on continual upgrades, but when X2 became available, I paused. I stopped to think about how much time I had spent over the years trying to work with the software instead of recording my music. I have made a decsion to go Mac and use Logic Pro. I don't believe that I am jumping from the pan into the fire, but time will tell.

Notwithstanding my descision to jump ship, I find virtually everyone here to be helpful and truly generous in giving
 their time to help fellow recording enthsiasts. For that, thank you very much.

Dan

Why would a problem crop up in this one instance?

The most common cause of sudden added latency is adding a plugin that uses an extra internal processing buffer, requiring delay compensation of other tracks to keep them in sync with the delayed output of the plug. SONAR does this automatically, but it can be over-ridden on input-monitored tracks by clicking the PDC button the Mix module of the control bar (so long as the PDC-inducing plug is not on the track being input monitored).


Plug-ins that need a lot of PDC should generally be reserved for the mixing/master stages where it doesn't matter.  Examples in SONAR are Perfect Space, Transient Shaper and Guitar Rig (variable, depending on the FX).

dank


Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Wrapping up from a long day and will try your various suggestions tomorrow evening.

Beepster, I do know about latency issues in general, but I have recorded many, many tracks with my Presonus with never an issue. Why would a problem crop up in this one instance?

I'm thinking you probably just have too much on your mind and need to step back. You've been using CW software for a long time, so we should probably assume that by now you know how to set the buffer size for your audio interface in preferences. If it's not that, then there's probably a pretty good chance you've inserted a plugin in that track that uses a look-ahead buffer (see brundlefly's response). Look at your "Where Did My Track Inputs Go" thread. jb101 gave you the answer to your problem, and then almost a day later you said you figured it out on your own, as if he never gave you the solution. :-) Busy holidays, busy brain. 

I have made a decsion to go Mac and use Logic Pro.

And you think that will buy you more time to record? Doubtful. 

I have made a decsion to go Mac and use Logic Pro. I don't believe that I am jumping from the pan into the fire, but time will tell.

Latency works the same when dealing with Mac/Logic.   


If you insert a latent plugin in a project... the rest of the audio will be delayed to maintain sync.
Having a Mac/OSX/Logic won't change this.

If the issue is high round-trip latency, the answer is exactly the same.
You need to work at small ASIO buffer sizes (to minimize round-trip latency) when overdubbing.
The older Presonus units have high round-trip latency when monitoring thru software-based EFX/processing.  This is due to a large hidden safety-buffer in the driver.
Using a Mac/OSX/Logic won't change this.  
A workaround is to double the sample-rate (roughly cuts round-trip latency in half)... but the solution is to get an audio interface that provides low round-trip latency.

I have gone to Edit > Preferences >Audio>Driver Settings and scrolled to Mixing Latency. The buffer adjustments are grayed out.