Delay compensation bug?

[guitarist9891]

So I usually route all my tracks to an AUX called "Master" and the MASTER to a Stereo Audio track called "PRINT". The input monitoring on the print track is always on so I can hear the session. The PRINT track is routed to my direct "OUT1-2"

Now, I was recording a song based on a previous version I did a while back. The previous version was a whole step lower than the key I chose for the new version. I wanted to replay the GTR Solo note for note, so I imported the original track and put the Avid Pitch II plugin on it just so I could hear the old version in the new key so it is faster to relearn it. the pitch plug and an eq plug I put on the old solo track caused 4155 samples of latency.

Now my entire session was routed to the aforementioned "Master" aux track. However the new track I was recording on and the "old solo" track I had the Pitch 2 plugin on were routed directly to OUT1-2. ( I forgot to reroute them )

Now I though "Delay compensation" which is obviously ON would take care of it. However now I see that everything I recorded (since I was recording based on what I was hearing) became out of time as soon as I routed the NEW SOLO track to the MASTER track. I thought it was a bug with a new version of PT but when I rolled back to 2018.7 same thing kept happening. Also even when the track was routed to OUT1-2 but I would hide and disable the OLD SOLO track the NEW SOLO would go out of sync when routed to OUT1-2. THAT SHOULDN'T BE HAPPENING RIGHT? ( I fixed it with a time adjuster plugin set to exactly 4155 samples and printed through the time adjuster so my final composite is in time with the rest of my session) but shouldn't delay compensation be taking care of issues like this.

Is this a bug or user error?

[guitarist9891]

Can anyone please try to recreate this, I want to know if it is a bug or if its just the way pro tools is. Maybe I just noticed this because of 4155 samples of latency on that one track. (which was not a usual case for me) Since then I removed the track with 4155 sample of latency and still notice this. just not as pronounced. So either it is a bug and PT is not compensating for latency or it is not supposed to in this case?....

[Top Jimmy]

Not a bug.

The biggest thing to understand is that Pro Tools cannot compensate correctly for all the possible routings that can exist in the Pro Tools mixer. You've discovered that things get dicey when compensated tracks are routed through auxes and input monitored audio tracks. Pro Tools is trying to compensate for what goes through them too, but what you hear in real-time is not where Pro Tools would spot the audio if printed to the print track. Sure, you may not have any delay inducing plugins on the master and print tracks, but if you don't want them to have an affect on the "under the hood" delay compensation, you should bypass the delay compensation on those two tracks.

Delay compensation can work properly when you think about mixing in layers. That is, primary tracks routed to submix and fx tracks which are then mixed together at the final mix track. As long as none of the layering is circumvented and you bypass delay compensation on layers where it isn't needed, delay compensation will always work correctly.

For simplicity's sake, I'd suggest sending the master track output directly to your hardware outs and only switch it to the print track when you're actually ready to print.

As an aside, explore the audiosuite plugins for pitch shifting so you don't have to deal with plugin delay in the future, and check out the shift edit function which would simply allow you to shift the audio in time a specified number of samples. It would save you from having to print a track to capture a time shift.

[XJENSEN]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

Not a bug.

... Pro Tools cannot compensate correctly

This says it.

[guitarist9891]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

Not a bug.

The biggest thing to understand is that Pro Tools cannot compensate correctly for all the possible routings that can exist in the Pro Tools mixer. You've discovered that things get dicey when compensated tracks are routed through auxes and input monitored audio tracks. Pro Tools is trying to compensate for what goes through them too, but what you hear in real-time is not where Pro Tools would spot the audio if printed to the print track. Sure, you may not have any delay inducing plugins on the master and print tracks, but if you don't want them to have an affect on the "under the hood" delay compensation, you should bypass the delay compensation on those two tracks.

Delay compensation can work properly when you think about mixing in layers. That is, primary tracks routed to submix and fx tracks which are then mixed together at the final mix track. As long as none of the layering is circumvented and you bypass delay compensation on layers where it isn't needed, delay compensation will always work correctly.

For simplicity's sake, I'd suggest sending the master track output directly to your hardware outs and only switch it to the print track when you're actually ready to print.

As an aside, explore the audiosuite plugins for pitch shifting so you don't have to deal with plugin delay in the future, and check out the shift edit function which would simply allow you to shift the audio in time a specified number of samples. It would save you from having to print a track to capture a time shift.

Thanks! I actually ended up nudging all my takes (Playlists) and the final composite 4155 samples rather than printing through time adjuster plugin. I don’t know if it’s my ears playing a trick on me or not but I think it sounds better than printing through time adjuster.

I am well aware of audiosuite! Don’t know why I didn’t do it with pitch 2 in this case. I guess I didn’t think it mattered! Now I now it does. And great tip on routing master directly to my outs.