windows 7 sound latency

Okay so I upgraded from a crappy desktop computer with XP to a new ASUS laptop with windows 7 for the purpose of more portable audio recording, yet every time I try to record more than 1 track of audio, I have serious sound delay/latency. I have attempted troubleshooting the issue for months and months, with no solutions whatsoever. I have done absolutely everything in my power to fix this issue, messed around with all my audio settings, updated and rolled back drivers and I seriously have no idea how to fix it. I threw out my old computer so now this my only option. my friend also has a desktop computer with windows 7 and I tested the audio recording and found it had the same issues as mine.


I need help urgently, I invested 900 dollars in a new computer for recording and it's a total lemon thanks to windows 7. Please, help me.


any light shed upon this topic would be greatly appreciated

and for the record I have tried many different audio recording software to ensure the problem was only with my computer and not the program. My old recording setup was a USB guitar pedal and ACID PRO 7.0 which I never had any problems with. Suddenly this same setup caused serious latency in multi track recording with my new computer.
I have also tried with my computer microphone and the problem persists. I have googled this problem endlessly, tried various tweaks and settings and audio software and have barely noticed an improvement. my various audio recording programs do have a way of adjusting latency but I have no idea what setting they should be at, and experimenting with these settings have only caused me headache after headache.

basically if I record a rhythm track with my guitar, if I record a second track on top of it it's always out of sync with the first track. I have read on google countless people using windows 7 with the same problem and nobody seems to have a solution. believe me, I am not a beginner to using computers. usually with trial and error I can solve most basic computer related problems, but this honestly has me stumped. I'm seriously at the point where I'm considering buying a crappy windows xp computer just so I can record music again

windows 7 is supposedly an upgrade to XP, yet XP was about a thousand times easier to use for recording music. I would do anything just to have my old recording setup back.

System Specs? It's not filled in.

I use Sonar X1 recording software, but I NEVER use my internal sound card for recording. On my new Lenovo Laptop with an i5 CPU, I have an MAudio Fastrack Ultra 8R USB connected interface unit and I can get latency under 6ms. On my desktop recording system, the same way - I use a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, firewire connected 8 channel unit and get under 10ms with it.

I have a POD X3 but I haven't tried it for recording since I have the other interface units.

But, I suspect it's the integrated audio in the PC that is the issue. In addition Vista and Win 7 handle some audio functions differently than XP and may account for some of the problems.

I can sympathize with you as latency is a major issue with all computer based recording, but I don't have a fix for your problems only to suggest trying a separate recording interface unit rather than relying on the internal sound "card" for recording. I see many posts about latency using the internal PC's sound in both laptop and desktop systems.