The fastest way to start playback

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Warube

I'm not able to test it right now because I don't have the actual machine at home, but I'm not using delay compensation. Delay compensation automatically shifts the waveform slightly forward for playback, right? What I want this time is for the sound to play simultaneously like a musical instrument when the Space button is pressed. When I used a Mac Pro with HD I/O and HD Card, running Pro Tools HD9, the playback was just on time.

That’s nice, but instead of just repeating yourself, why don’t you actually double check on the computer if delay compensation happens to be enabled.

If delay compensation could not in any way be responsible for adding latency I would not be raising this as a question. You seem lost as to what delay compensation does or how it works, or how recent versions of Pro Tools have changed delay compensation handling. But instead of getting into all that here, just double check if it is enabled.

[Warube]

Thank you all for your advice.
I'll share more details about my setup.
I'm only using audio tracks. There are about 16 tracks when in mono. I use a 16-channel out.
I line up more than 20 songs, so the length becomes about 2 hours.
I don't insert any plugins and simply arrange and play clips of final edited stems.
With my previous system, I was able to play back perfectly in sync.
It might be due to the specifications of the HDX card, but I'm interested in hearing opinions from others who manipulate live concerts in the same way.
I appreciate and learn a lot from all of your advice.

[Warube]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

That’s nice, but instead of just repeating yourself, why don’t you actually double check on the computer if delay compensation happens to be enabled.

If delay compensation could not in any way be responsible for adding latency I would not be raising this as a question. You seem lost as to what delay compensation does or how it works, or how recent versions of Pro Tools have changed delay compensation handling. But instead of getting into all that here, just double check if it is enabled.

I have checked with the actual machine. I am not using delay compensation.
I tried removing delay compensation in the I/O settings during recording and also tried applying delay compensation from the options, but it did not affect the time it took for the sound to play from pressing the play button.
There is about a 2400 sample lag from when I press the space bar until the sound is produced. I am testing this by aligning the click sound to the grid and using two devices.

[Warube]

I asked a specialist in Japan, who suggested that the playback engine's cache size would be the most relevant factor. I tried changing the size and testing it, but the lag remained the same. I think the OS and Pro Tools versions may also be factors, so I will continue testing patiently.
If I find anything, I will report back. Thank you for your advice.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Warube

I have checked with the actual machine. I am not using delay compensation.
I tried removing delay compensation in the I/O settings during recording and also tried applying delay compensation from the options, but it did not affect the time it took for the sound to play from pressing the play button.
There is about a 2400 sample lag from when I press the space bar until the sound is produced. I am testing this by aligning the click sound to the grid and using two devices.

Great, Thanks. Delay comp while recording won't make a difference here, the question would be did you have some huge latency plugins in the mix esp. on an output path, while playing back. And you also said you don't use plugins. But it's good to confirm.

You are using HDX and not the hybrid engine right? No complex routing? Say just straight 16 track outputs direct to 16 physical I/O?

You have H/D IO so no way to test that native... but you can do simple test of switching the playback engine to the Mac's speaker or built-in output or whatever it is called and test what the latency is with that.

You can also create a trivial session with one audio track and say just record a clap on that, and then test how long that takes to start.

Is there any real need for HDX here? Are you monitoring live performances though Pro Tools? If not you might as well just run all this native. (Although if up to me and it's only straight playback I'd keep Pro Tools or other DAWs out of it and just use a digital recorder for live playback).

Disk cache is unlikely to be an issue, but if the sessions are huge you can always look at the disk cache meter and wait until it goes green before pressing play.

I suspect it's much more a mistake like a silent a count-in or wait for MIDI note or some such thing.

[Tweakhead]

You're not using a bluetooth keyboard are you ?

[smurfyou]

Part of the problem is that Pro Tools v10 and under were much faster to start playback than v11 and above. Especially with the horrible video engine enabled but even without there is a noticeable delay compared to older versions and compared to other DAWs.

Good questions above, especially about the Bluetooth keyboard.

[Warube]

I'm using it for live concerts, so of course, I have both Bluetooth and Wifi turned off.

[Warube]

Originally Posted by smurfyou

Part of the problem is that Pro Tools v10 and under were much faster to start playback than v11 and above. Especially with the horrible video engine enabled but even without there is a noticeable delay compared to older versions and compared to other DAWs.

Good questions above, especially about the Bluetooth keyboard.

So, it's been like that since Pro Tools v11. Thank you very much for the valuable information.

[JingleDjango]

Yeah, this is an annoyance I ran up against recording dx for animation and video games, where we want the recorder always running but need to to interrupt the transport to pull selects between takes. On the old TDM systems I could hit stop and then record as fast as my fingers would move and trust that PT would never miss a beat. The transport was instantaneous. As soon as we moved from PT10 to PT12 we had to start being a lot more methodical about when and how we did the same moves.

Is there anything binding you to Pro Tools? Any reason you couldn't use Ableton Live? I believe it's become a very popular option for sync'ing performance to backing tracks.