Mixing latency

Sonar has a Buffer Size slider in Edit > Preferences > Audio - Driver Settings to set mixing latency. Mixing latency is the amount of time Sonar allocates to prepare a buffer full of audio data for playback. Lower latency settings add processing time because of the need to refill the smaller data buffers more often. You may need to use the slider to increase mixing latency under the following conditions:

You use lots of real-time effects, and you hear dropouts. Check the CPU meter for high readings; try increasing the latency.

Your sound card does not function well at lower latency. Some sound cards just do not function well at lower latency settings. Even though Sonar’s CPU meter and Dropout indicator report no problems, if you hear dropouts try increasing the mixing latency.

Sound cards differ in the precision of their timing, what size audio buffers they require, and other characteristics. Sonar has a utility called the Wave Profiler that can usually automatically detect the type of sound card that you have installed and configure its settings for best performance. If your sound card is a well-known model, you can usually use Sonar without having to change many audio settings. However, if you experience synchronization problems between MIDI and digital audio, like to use different sample rates and bit depths, or want to experiment with mixing latency, you need to do some optimization yourself.

 

See:

The Wave Profiler

CPU meter/Disk meter/Dropout indicator