Latency with UAD-2

[seanmccoy]

Hey all. Just upgraded from a great old ADK workstation to a great new ADK workstation. Running HDN with an Omni under 8.1 Pro. All is running well, except for impossible amounts of latency during recording with any UAD-2 plugins anywhere in the chain. All other native plugins are fine. Is this normal?

[seanmccoy]

Okay, upon further inspection of the specifics and their numbers, it turns out that it's just a case of the UAD-2 plugins introducing far more latency than any of the Waves, Avid, Softube or other plugs I compared them against, and doing a latency click track recording test confirms that the actual number samples of latency shown in the compensation display are indeed added to any recorded tracks. (My base latency with no plugs is about 330 samples)

So the NEW question, since I'm assuming many, many of you are intimately familiar with this issue, is how does everybody deal with this? I use strictly outboard gear during recording, but what if you want to overdub into projects that already have a bunch of latency-inducing plugins instancated? Do you really have to deactivate them all? There must be a better way!

[propower]

You can use low latency monitoring on the OMNI (only works with AVID interfaces). Bypasses all plugs and sends on record enabled channel but will give you 1.9ms latency at 44.1K or 0.47ms latency at 96K.

[seanmccoy]

Unfortunately not an option for me, as I need to be able to set up customizable mixes for my talent, and LLM kills the aux sends.

With further testing, I'm getting further confused. If "compensate for input delays after record pass" is checked in my I/O setup, PT will add the cumulative delay compensation amount in the entire project to the recorded files, making them (potentially) wildly late in the timeline. When it's off, I get the normal ADDA amount of latency. Isn't that counter-intuitive?

[Mike496]

I use a line split after my outboard pre, one is retuned to the converter the other goes to a smaller mixer for the artist to monitor their que mix off of.

[albee1952]

I find the latency annoying as well. I try to put all UAD plugins in the same slot(as in A, B, C, etc) so I can make the entire row inactive for tracking. My template sessions have my usual high-latency plugins in place, with general presets, BUT made inactive. If you only have a few UAD plugins, you can open them, one by one, and click the little microphone symbol near the bottom-left to put the plugin(s) into "live" mode(low latency), but this setting is NOT remembered when you close the session.

[seanmccoy]

Originally Posted by albee1952

I find the latency annoying as well. I try to put all UAD plugins in the same slot(as in A, B, C, etc) so I can make the entire row inactive for tracking. My template sessions have my usual high-latency plugins in place, with general presets, BUT made inactive. If you only have a few UAD plugins, you can open them, one by one, and click the little microphone symbol near the bottom-left to put the plugin(s) into "live" mode(low latency), but this setting is NOT remembered when you close the session.

Thanks for the UAD low latency tip! Wasn't aware of that one.

Okay, I was mistaken about the "compensate for input delays after record pass" influence. It does nothing at all either way.

I did discover that the problem of cumulative delay being added to the recording track only happens if recording is done through a bus. Recording direct to a track through a physical input not only eliminates any added track delay, but also reduces the base sample latency by about 200 samples. Adding live UAD or other high-latency plugs to the recording channel or master output still causes monitoring latency, but doesn't cause recordings to be made out of sync. So overdubbing into heavily mixed projects can work by simply de-activating any high latency plugs on the recording and main out tracks. Whew! Quite a relief. Thanks for all the input, guys.

[Craig F]

UAD plugs have 4 buffers to go through:
PT Buffer setting to get out of the Mixer and go to the UAD
the Receiving Buffer of the UAD
the Output Buffer of the UAD
Pro Tools Buffer to get it back into the mixer

if you want to track through UAD plugs an UAD Interface is the best option so the plugs can be used before ever getting to Pro Tools

[seanmccoy]

Originally Posted by Craig F

UAD plugs have 4 buffers to go through:
PT Buffer setting to get out of the Mixer and go to the UAD
the Receiving Buffer of the UAD
the Output Buffer of the UAD
Pro Tools Buffer to get it back into the mixer

if you want to track through UAD plugs an UAD Interface is the best option so the plugs can be used before ever getting to Pro Tools

Understood. I don't track through plugins—too much money invested in outboard gear for that! My concern was that PT was adding the project's latency to recorded tracks even if the recording channel had no plugins inserted. As I mentioned, eliminating buses from the chain fixed that.

I also found it interesting that UAD's per-plugin latency was far lower in PT10 than PT11. Same issues, but smaller amounts. Obviously an engine thing.