Guys, the entire midi clip is not happening in the first part. So, it does several takes and every midi clip is not starting until well after the first beat.
 
You can hear it while recording but when it stops, part of the midi clip didn't even record.

have you tried using input quantize??

Yes, thanks for bringing that up, it still does it.
 
I want to print screen and show you guys the deal but the picture is always too small and lame. My print screen/post picture skilzz are not too good (hehe)

hrm... turn snap off???

Will try, but that doesn't work in the paradigm of sonar and all the "smart" stuff. Still, will give it a go.

Hi Chrisharbin,

I suspect you have your MIDI prepare buffers set too low. Go to Preference - MIDI - Playback and Recording. Under Playback change to  Prepare using 500 (or 750) millisecond buffers. It defaults to 250. 

hey chris - i just thought of something else when i was doing drum loops and it was all bunky on playback... i had enabled snap to scale on the midi track. make sure that's off as well - you can do it in either prv or track inspector.  i'll give this a shot when i get back to my oxygen.

Guys, thank you, I'll report back!

Ok, so at first, I thought this was working (the buffer) and then it went into weirdness. So I tried disabling snap, and that working at first. then the next time it went into weirdness. Very bummed.

now a crash, gosh........fun!