Hi johnstaf,
Thanks for replying. Afraid I’ve tried the checking the ‘Use system timestamp’ option, but to no avail.
I have just tried several takes of playing back a quantized four note chord from a MIDI out port to a MIDI in and recording it on a separate channel as suggested by Paul Coyle and tried by the OP. I’ve noticed that each time this is recorded, the gap between the first of the new recorded MIDI notes differs - I had ranges between circa 140-350 samples.
Weirdly, the order of the four notes and their spread always looked roughly the same though - lowest note, followed by the middle two played together and lastly the highest. Here’s a link to a picture of one of these MIDI out to MIDI in recordings:
Like the OP, this makes me think that it must be an issue with Cubase Artist 7 playing wonky MIDI out. It looked like this issue only came recently to the OP, so I’m wondering if there’s a small chance the OP’s difficulties started post updating to 8.1. I mention this as I see Steinberg have issued a sticky about ongoing driver testing for 8.1, however I wouldn’t know any different as my laptop was supplied with the update already installed.