Is this an acknowledged problem? I guess I have never actually started a tune with a MIDI note until tonight.. At to my horror X2 is not picking up any MIDI notes that start at 00:00:00, regardless of what synth they're sent to. Googling I see that others have mentioned this problem and suggested to leave an empty bar at the start of the song. Fair enough, but how can such a fundamental bug have slipped through the net? 

I leave a couple of bars and use that as the count in too. 

Maybe because this workround is so effective they don't need to fix the bug- or maybe it is a symptom of DECADES OLD ANCIENT CODE and requires urgent redressing or otherwise I'm switching to DAW X.

Whatever floats your boat.


edit: good point below by musichoo- he beat me to it.

Hi, sharke,
                Did you play the MIDI note or insert it manually? If you play it, it would be possible that you might play a split second ahead of 00:00:00, then it will not be recorded, I had done that mistake myself. Go to PRV to check if the note is there. If the note is there and not make any sound, then check if you had any automation like volume that is too low.

                This is what I can think of for now. If it is none of the above then it is definately a bug that need to be addressed.

I just tried it and I can record right on the first beat. Did you at least let the metronome give you a 1 measure count-in? 

I actually used step record. There is no doubt that the notes in question are bang on zero. 

Pick up the clip and move it one bar to the right and see what happens. Generally starting music right on bar 1 or 00.00.00.00 is not a great idea. Sometimes there might be some stuff you want to happen before the first note and it might either delay notes or not play them.

To keep bar numbers in tact is just a silly reason to start right on bar 1. Leave two bars before starting any music. That way you have room to insert all matter of program changes, automation edits etc before the music starts. I have encountered that issue in many DAW's. It is not DAW related as such just a little too much to expect right on beat 1 of bar 1.

Jeff Evans


Pick up the clip and move it one bar to the right and see what happens.

I tried that, it plays. It's when the first note falls exactly on tick 1 of the project that it doesn't play. 

I was reading that you can change your midi buffers from 250 to 500 and that fixes it ... but it adds a 1/2 second delay to your start time when you hit the space bar to play your project.

I always start my projects quite a few measures in anyway because of track alignment.

Long story short ... audio tracks don't line up very well if you start at 0 measure (referring to Record Latency). I noticed this in Sonar one time when I was trying to manually adjust my Record Latency. It drifted randomly if I started my tracks at 0 measure, so from that point on I started 8 or so measures in. Probably something to do with buffers and all that.

I would never start a project at 0 measure even if I didn't know about the Record Latency drift ... but that's just how I work, probably not the norm.

And just to clarify: I have tried this with Massive, Reaktor, Absynth, Dimension Pro and Rapture - multiple sounds on each. 

Update: It seems this is an occasional bug. I restarted Sonar and it worked. Restarted again and I have the same problem. 

I guess it's no biggie because there's no reason to start at measure 0,  it's just a little weird.