tlw


On the subject of MIDI buffers.

Set this to 500 (as a minimum). Decreasing it won't reduce latency in the slightest, and increasing it won't affect latency either. Latency is a by-product of the audio drivers and hardware, not MIDI. Put simply, it's the amount of time Sonar looks ahead of itself when reading already existing data from MIDI tracks. A longer time period gives Sonar more time to do the necessary processing to keep up with itself, if you see what I mean.

If that buffer time is too short you get dropouts, missed notes and all sorts of MIDI timing errors.  Increasing it from the default to around 500 (or even more) will go a long way to preventing MIDI timing issues and dropped notes on playback.

Thanks TLW I give that a shot and see if that works on the errant missing notes.
 
The one thing that is throwing me curve on this simple issue of timing stems from working with CWPA9 for so many years. Never once in over 10 years of using it have I never had to change any timing parameters midi or audio. It all just worked.

Awesome TLW!
 
Pushed up the Midi buffer to 500 as you suggested and then re-ran the wave profiler (this time it set the audio buffer at 39.1Ms) and now it works like a midi charm! Midi data replay now sounds in-step & in-time and so far I haven't heard any missing notes, yet. 
 
Now onto record and mix some midi & audio together with X2, hopefully today, to see what kind of worms that opens, hopefully none.

I have no idea why Sonar's default MIDI buffer setting is 250ms. It seems to cause loads of people problems - me included which is how I came to find out about it having first spent a couple of days tearing out what hair I have left.

People from Cake have even recommended 500ms on this forum before now.
It usually strikes when things look OK, then an extra synth or an extra step-sequencer pattern is added, then all of a sudden MIDI is all over the place. Entering notes in to the step sequencer while it is running seems to cause most problems in my experience.

It's such a common problem I think I'll put a feature request in suggesting that the default setting should be 500ms when Sonar is installed.

Anyway, glad you're sorted.


PS- 39.1ms latency? I seriously suggest you give ASIO4ALL a try or, better, get an interface with ASIO drives. I certainly couldn't play a soft synth with that much latency.

tlw


I have no idea why Sonar's default MIDI buffer setting is 250ms. It seems to cause loads of people problems - me included which is how I came to find out about it having first spent a couple of days tearing out what hair I have left.

People from Cake have even recommended 500ms on this forum before now.
It usually strikes when things look OK, then an extra synth or an extra step-sequencer pattern is added, then all of a sudden MIDI is all over the place. Entering notes in to the step sequencer while it is running seems to cause most problems in my experience.

It's such a common problem I think I'll put a feature request in suggesting that the default setting should be 500ms when Sonar is installed.

Yeah you think they would. After doing that it made me check on my other machine still running CWPA9 and it is defaulted at 500. Wonder why they would change it anyway. Maybe they just think that machines now are just built bigger and badder and can just handle it? who knows...

tlw


PS- 39.1ms latency? I seriously suggest you give ASIO4ALL a try or, better, get an interface with ASIO drives. I certainly couldn't play a soft synth with that much latency.

Yeah I know but I am just test driving the trial on my laptop so I don't want to make a mess of this machines audio so I'm kinda stuck with it. The machine I intend of installing it on, if I upgrade, is full of ASIO.

tlw


Anyway, glad you're sorted.

Well... yes and no... Since pushing up the buffer and lay down nice clean midi track and then play it back, all seems fine but, as soon as I start splitting it into clips it goes slightly whacky again and I haven't even moved them yet, just spit it. And then if you copy and paste into a second or third track? It gets progressivly worse. It's no longer dropping notes it's as if all notes in each clip shift sligthly on each progressive paste. 
 
At first I thought maybe I was quantizing on an odd signature or snapping to the grid or something but doesn't seem to be the case. If I take a snippet and paste it into a second track and then open the piano roll view and inspect it next to the original they are slightly moved backwards and then progressivley moved backwards by each track paste. Like I said have never had any of these problems on my main machine. It's kind of baffling right now.

The only time I've seen that kind of behaviour, as far as I can recall, is when I've had snap-to set to "move by" rather than "move to" and the "magnetic" snap setting not strong enough.
So I'd suggest checking the snap-to settings making sure the switch to the right of the snap icon in the control bar is set to "snap to", not "snap by".
Also, with a project loaded, right click the Snap icon in the control bar. That launches the preferences. Try setting magnetic snap to "extreme".



May or may not be the cause of your particular problem, but it's the only thing that occurs to me at the moment.

Was a bit confused with the snap "BY" & snap "TO"... It was on "snap by"... changed it too "snap to"... probelm still persists though...
 
I can lay down multiple single track midi takes. But as soon as I make a split anyehre, on any single track, at that split point that track drags by about 4Ms as soon as it hits the split. And still if you take it and copy paste it somewhere else add another 4Ms drag and so on...
 
Like I said is drivin me nuts! Even exported the identical tracks into midi files, opened them in CWPA9 and can do what I please for editing, moving, and splitting and all work without a hitch, or behave. After I saved them again from CWPA9 I opened them back in X2 again and as long as I don't touch them they all work fine until I make a split in X2, and again not move anything other than just split it, and it still goes wonky in the same manner.
 
I dunno maybe it's the clock on this onboard sound chip but none the less it's hard to grasp what is causing even the itsy-bitsy editing delay, even when forcing midi clock +/- offsets.
 
This is making it hard wether or not if I should upgrade or not.