the possible reason for cubase not remembering what instruments where used is that when your saving your song your clicking "save arrangement", this only saves note positions. Always finish by clicking "save song" which saves everything.

Latency is your problem when the audio is out of sync. if you go into your audio pull-down menu and select system, in the top right hand corner you'll see an ASIO selection. u use asio mme drivers to record which have a higher latency than the other option ASIO Directx with give a lower latency but u wont be able to record while using them.

i use a sblive myself and the latency was a real issue until i got my hands on a crack for the sblive with gives u a new mixer window plus the ability to reduce your latency in cubase to 8ms as compared to about 250-700 with the regular asio drivers. check this website; http://atlas.hemmet.chalmers.se/livecenter/showpage.php?name=apsasio which gives u the info u need. this modification isnt supported by the manufacturer and dont blame me if something goes wrong along the way. if do go ahead take care to follow all instructions, if it doesnt work u can just uninstall it and reinstall your normal sblive drivers.

other than that if u get a copy of cubase version 5 and go to your audio system folder again u should see a third asio option which will give u very low latency which should solve your problem.

for more music technology related solutions check the forum at www.soundtraining.com, im not trying to poach customers from this site but its the main site i answer questions from as i work at The Sound Training Centre in dublin, ireland.