delay reporting is INCORRECT, please help!

[greggiorgio]

Hey guys,

I am doing my first serious ITB mix on LE... I am using a bunch of plugins, and I know I need to compensate for their latency.
Mostly, I am using waves ren comp and eq. As far as I can tell, the delay reporting at the bottom of the channel strip is incorrect.

Here is an example of the problem:

I can take a snare track and duplicate it... with no plugins, the tracks sound fine together. When I add ren comp to one of them, I get a delay from that signal. The delay reporting says it is delayed by 64 samples. So I nudge that track 64 samples earlier in time, and I still hear phasing between the two.

Am I missing something here? It's making me insane - please help!

My setup is mac dual 2ghz g5, 1 gb ram, PTLE 6.9.2, 002r I am having this problem with both waves and powered plugins.

THANKS!

Greg

[Slim Shady]

Are you sure you're hearing phasing, or is it maybe just the rub of the two signals which are no longer exactly the same? (one is compressed, one is not - even if you're not hitting the threshhold, there's still going to be a slight change in character of the sound due to the plug-in).

What do you mean by "powered" plug-ins?

[greggiorgio]

Thanks for responding.

I know it's not the processing... There is no compression going on when I do the test. It's phasing I hear because it's not synced up in time. By powered plugins I mean a UAD-1 powered plugin card.

Funny thing is I could understand if powered plugins gave me this problem, since they are using a third pardy piece of hardware - BUT I am not having problems with the powered plugins. They come with a delay compansation plugin that works exactly as it should.

I am having problems with Waves, which are just RTAS plugins...

Any ideas?

Greg

ps. none of my software is pirated, in case you were wondering.

[tele_player]

You can use ProTools to measure the delays, which is more precise than saying you hear phasing.

I'd expect Waves to report the delay pretty close - the UAD setup, running VST with the wrapper plus the inherent latency talking to the card, I'd feel less confident about.

[greggiorgio]

How can I use pro tools to measure the delays?

Saying I hear phasing is very reliable, because I hear it - it's obvious. It's not like, "hey, DOES that sound wierd" it's more like "that sounds terrible, it's phasing, please kill me now".

Again, in the case of the powered plugins, I can add the 1176 to one track, and the delay comp plugin on the other track and it sounds PERFECT. So, the powered plugins are not my concern really (even though the delay reporting is wrong on those too).

- greg

[bassntreble]

use the time adjuster plugin to zero in on the exact delay and nudge by that amount.

[David Penick]

Sorry to butt in, but could you tell me how to see the delay reporting? You said earlier that it's at the bottom of the channel strip (?)
Thanks

[tclash]

You could try bouncing your Waves-processed snare to a new audio track, which would show you how much it's being delayed.

[tele_player]

You can measure the delay by recording a single click on an audio track, bus the output to an aux track with a plugin on it, bus that output to another audio track and record it.

Then zoom way in compare the location of the transient on the two tracks. You can measure very precisely this way.

[Ducky]

Phasing with reverb is somewhat normal. It has a lot to do with the source material whether you can hear it or not. I like very creamy verbs on my solo instruments. Some verbs also have internal delays like IR-1 has a 10ms internal delay besides what is being reported. D-Verb has an adjustable delay setting. The suggestion of puttin in a 'marker' click at the beginning is the best way to determine the actual delay (latency and internal to the plugin).

The other way around this is to use the wet setting of the reverb plugin so all the processing is handled inside the plugin and this removes the delay issue.

One way to determine if phasing is going on, other than listening (since this is also dependent on room accoustics) is to watch the meters. When you sum a wet and dry signal, your output should be greater. If significant phasing is happening, your output will be equal to the loudest signal or less. When summing, the output signal should always be greater than the highest input signal.