So every once ina blue moon Ill load a soft synth and use it. I dont recall having this issue before, but there is a noticable delay from my keyboard to the soft synth. Its reacking havoc when trying to play to a drum track or click track. I have tried changing settings in both sonar and my extermal audiobox. Yes I have the latest drivers for my presonus and I have tried reinstalling them as well. What else can cause this delay?

Its a latency issue. Lower your audio buffer either in the audio preferences or change it in your ASIO control panel. As an aside install the D patch. There no reason not to run  the most up to date version of a program.

+1

Wish I had the answers for you here Big J, but my latency always comes from my ASIO drivers being too high because I forget to lower them. LOL! When I record midi and use a VSTi, I go down to 64 buffers or 128 for bigger projects that already have a lot going on. When I'm done, I go back up to 2048. If you are using low buffer sizes like me, it may be another issue that might not be related to Sonar. For example, how many system processes do you see running if you bring up task manager while Sonar is open and you're experiencing this delay?

Anything over 50 for me running Windows 7 will definitely bog things down a little on my end. My recording boxes only have 39 running processes that need to be there. But on my net boxes where I mess around with sketch ideas etc, they have lots more running. If you use your box on the net and see like 70 or 80 things running, you may want to kill a few processes (just make sure you know what they are and what they do) and see if you still get the delay. If it's not an ASIO setting, I don't know what it could be other than something in your system stealing processing power away from Sonar. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but if I had this issue, that's where I'd look. Hope you solve it or someone enters the thread that can help you.

-Danny

Another spot to look for latency is on the buses. For instance, I usually bypass the fx bin or PC on the Master bus (which is loaded with my usual assortment of fx) when recording new tracks.



 

I'm assuming you're using SONAR X1 or X2. In SONAR, choose Edit > Preferences (or press P). Then choose the Audio - Playback and Recording category and make sure your Driver Mode is set to ASIO or WDM, although SONAR prefers ASIO. Then choose the Audio - Driver Settings category and set the Mixing Latency: Buffer Size. The lower the setting, the less latency delay but the more CPU power is required. Try Danny's suggestions for ASIO settings and for WDM, make sure the Buffer Size slider is set to 10ms or less.

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com
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well John hit the nail on the head. Definitly a buffer setting. LOL my buffer at start up was set to 2048 which gave me a 45.8 ms delay, once I lowered my buffer size to 64 it dropped way down to 1.2ms. Since I havent run anything midi ina long while that required my actually pounding my keyboard I didnt notice what my buffer was set to. Also I notice that minus sonar and my soft synth I do have 55 processes running in the background, geez, but after changing the buffer size even with all that crap in the background its running as it should. Thanks for all the info guys 

Its reacking havoc

It's "wreaking havoc".

Yeah Big J, you just have to remember to set your buffer sizes according to what you're doing. I use a mixing console with Sonar, so I can leave my buffers set to 2048 all the time unless I need to trigger a VSTi in real time. Because of the mixer and me not having to worry about direct input monitoring through my soundcard, I have my buffers just about always set to 2048 as it will give me lots more cpu headroom to run plugs and stuff. But the second I fire up my keyboard and play, I remember that I have to adjust my buffer size. LOL!

If you can, try to get into the habit of using a record mode and a mix mode. Meaning, when you record your stuff, set it to 64. When you're done all your recording, bump it back up to 2048 this way as you load up more plugs and stuff, you won't get any drop outs or hiccups in your audio. If you find that you have to re-record something and you have lots of plugs and softsynths running, you may not be able to go down to 64 and might have to use 128 or even disable some plugs to get your recording done. This of course depends on how mean your pc is as well as how many things you have happening in the project. But you should be ok now...even with those 55 things running. It's always good (in the recording realm) to never allow things to initiate on their own. Meaning, just about everything on my system that auto-starts, is something that is system related that NEEDS to auto-start.

Stuff like bing bars, quiktime, win-amp agent, msn, yahoo, aim or anything else for entertainment purposes that wants to auto-start when Windows starts (unless it's important)...should pretty much (in my opinion) not be allowed to run unless you physically start them yourself. You'll notice your system will run a lot smoother and may even pick up some speed for certain tasks. At any rate, I'm glad you sorted it out. :)

-Danny

daveny5

Its reacking havoc

It's "wreaking havoc".

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