Input Monitoring With Sonar 2.0XL?

[Inspired]

I did exactly what the Help section said to do in order to achieve real-time input monitoring within Sonar, but it's still not real time. When I hit a chord or note, it sounds a second later and echos a little bit. Is this a latency problem?

I'm using M-Audio's Audiophile 2496. Any ideas? I'll try to post all of my Options-Audio settings to give a greater picture of what's going on.

 

[moskus]

Yes, this is a latency problem.

Set the DMA Buffers in your soundcard Control Panel to, say, 128.
Open Sonar and reprofile your card. Set the latency as low as possible.

 

[Inspired]

Awesome. I figured it out last night, but I lowered the buffer within Sonar rather than my soundcard's mixer. I didn't read this post until today. Should I put it back where it was at, and change the DMA Buffer in my soundcard's mixer instead? Or just have both of them set relatively low? I experience a Dropout every now and then, but it's not bad at all. Probably only happened 2 or 3 times.

Thanks...

 

[dachay2tnr]

If it's working for you, leave it as is.

The trade off for lower latency is a higher resource demand on your system. This can result in drop-outs or erratic playback or no playback. Ultimately you'll need to find an acceptable balance between the two (or upgrade your computer). The drop-out problem will, of course, only get worse as you add tracks or effects to your mix.

What some people do to work around this is to achive some of the other tracks while recording using Input Monitoring. Eliminating tracks this way will lower the overall demand placed on your system. Then, after you have recorded the part, unarchive the tracks and increase your latency settings. Obviously this is a little more work, but does allow you to work around the problem.