no side chain delay compensation for HD Native users

[OliverH]

Originally Posted by stakeoutstudios

Pllleeeease fix this Avid. I was dying to use side-chaining today. Yes, I mean side chaining that is in time. It's time to remove any delay compensation limitations, especially the artificially imposed sample limits. Why give us poor people mixing something to worry about that we really shouldn't have to think about. Hit play, it should all be in time, side chains and all - even if we insert a plugin with ridiculous latency. You've done some great things lately, let's add this long standing gripe to the fix list!

Preach on brother. You have no idea... I've been so fired up about this lacking feature that seems to be an HDX-only luxury still (and I believe only technically works with DSP AAX plugins?).

I want to start a movement to be heard on this one... it's been slow but if we stir the pot enough maybe they'll work it into a future release?!?!

[Kregan]

I'm on a 12.4 native system and the workaround posted by Macsearcher doesn't work for me.

Unless I did it wrong, i'm pretty sure this workaround doesn't work at all, even on native systems.

[OliverH]

Originally Posted by Kregan

I'm on a 12.4 native system and the workaround posted by Macsearcher doesn't work for me.

Unless I did it wrong, i'm pretty sure this workaround doesn't work at all, even on native systems.

hmm. Good to know!

[Kregan]

Alright after experimenting for 6 hours I think i've found the best workaround.

First off the previous workaround for native systems does not work because if your sending to an aux, the audio will still be delayed by the plugins on the audio track so the side chain will be off. I think that dude had a different problem anyway

Interestingly though i've noticed that the side chain will only be off if the trigger track has delay inducing plug ins and the delay reading has numbers on it. It will not be off if the trigger track is being compensated but does not have delay on its own track.

So the best option i've found is to duplicate and make a dedicated trigger track and make sure it does not have any delay on it. Set up the side chain from that track, configure the compressor settings then everything else takes care of itself. You don't have to worry about delay on other tracks because the side chain will work if the trigger track is being compensated as long as it doesn't have any delay on its own track.

This way you can use all your fancy plugins on the kick track or any other track as long as there is no delay on the duplicated trigger track and the side chain will still be in time!

The only downside is that the compressor won't react in real time to the changes you make to the original trigger track... EQ, envelope shaping etc. But the timing will be rock solid! And you could make changes to the compressor settings after you change the original trigger track/kick or whatever it is.

I tested this thoroughly but if anyone wants to make sure there are no holes in my testing or can find an even better way of doing things it could benefit us all.

Cheers guys

[mlange]

Originally Posted by Kregan

Alright after experimenting for 6 hours I think i've found the best workaround.

First off the previous workaround for native systems does not work because if your sending to an aux, the audio will still be delayed by the plugins on the audio track so the side chain will be off. I think that dude had a different problem anyway

Interestingly though i've noticed that the side chain will only be off if the trigger track has delay inducing plug ins and the delay reading has numbers on it. It will not be off if the trigger track is being compensated but does not have delay on its own track.

So the best option i've found is to duplicate and make a dedicated trigger track and make sure it does not have any delay on it. Set up the side chain from that track, configure the compressor settings then everything else takes care of itself. You don't have to worry about delay on other tracks because the side chain will work if the trigger track is being compensated as long as it doesn't have any delay on its own track.

This way you can use all your fancy plugins on the kick track or any other track as long as there is no delay on the duplicated trigger track and the side chain will still be in time!

The only downside is that the compressor won't react in real time to the changes you make to the original trigger track... EQ, envelope shaping etc. But the timing will be rock solid! And you could make changes to the compressor settings after you change the original trigger track/kick or whatever it is.

I tested this thoroughly but if anyone wants to make sure there are no holes in my testing or can find an even better way of doing things it could benefit us all.

Cheers guys

Thanks for all the work bird dogging this - I'll see how this fares

[Wall2Wall]

Originally Posted by Kregan

...This way you can use all your fancy plugins on the kick track or any other track as long as there is no delay on the duplicated trigger track and the side chain will still be in time!

The only downside is that the compressor won't react in real time to the changes you make to the original trigger track... EQ, envelope shaping etc. But the timing will be rock solid! And you could make changes to the compressor settings after you change the original trigger track/kick or whatever it is...

Can you sidechain off a "frozen" dupe track that has all your plugins?

[Kregan]

Originally Posted by Wall2Wall

Can you sidechain off a "frozen" dupe track that has all your plugins?

Haven't tested this but I would assume no because the key seems to be that there is no delay on the trigger track.

Freezing the trigger track would still have delay on it to keep it in time with the rest of the session.

It's ok to have the trigger track be compensated but it can't have it's own delay on it.

[Kregan]

Originally Posted by mlange

Thanks for all the work bird dogging this - I'll see how this fares

No problem hope it helps.

Let me know how you get on :)

[OliverH]

Originally Posted by Kregan

Haven't tested this but I would assume no because the key seems to be that there is no delay on the trigger track.

Freezing the trigger track would still have delay on it to keep it in time with the rest of the session.

It's ok to have the trigger track be compensated but it can't have it's own delay on it.

Yes thank you Kregan for digging in on this! I'm actually pretty excited to try this out (duping the trigger track and making sure it's not inducing any delay from plugins... but still being possibly being compensated by others)!

However, I am also very curious about Wall2Wall's question about freezing the dupe track with plugins being frozen too. I'm not in front of my rig right now so can't test this, but in theory, I feel like this might work?!? Let's say I have 3 plugins on my kick trigger track that induce a lot of delay, say 3,000 samples or something like that. If I dupe it, then freeze, those 3 plugins & whatever they're doing to the audio's level, envelope, EQ, etc... would be "frozen"/temporarily printed, whatever you wanna call it... and there should then be no delay being induced anymore on the dupe track because those plugins get deactivated and the delay they were inducing should be nulled back to zero, no?

[Wall2Wall]

I haven't tried it myself but I thought freeze/commit would be a workaround. This article may shed some light.

Does Track Commit Added In Pro Tools 12.3 Work With Side Chain Trigger Plug-ins?