[hef]

okay, sorry in advance for the drawn out post. as i just finished reading a bunch of threads on here about delay compensation, i'm still a little confused.

I'm wondering how i should be using delay compensation while laying back to digibeta.
i've always done laybacks straight out from my Aux Stem tracks (Dia, Mus, Sfx) to digital tie lines to DigiBeta. In the past I never had to deal with print master tracks because i was delivering digibetas and d88s- no files. but now they want files and digibetas. when making files i see that they're slightly off which lead me to do some tests.

So i put a 2 pop on a dialog track in a heavily routed and lots of plugin session. I turned on Delay Comp and layed the pop back to digibeta 1&2 and then I turned off Delay Comp and layed the pop to 3&4.

then i made a new session and recorded the pop from digibeta back to 2 stereo tracks. the result was with delay compensation (1&2) the pop was 20 subframes early (why???) and without delay compensation (3&4) the pop was 20 subframes late.

my conclusion from this is that i've definitely been doing things wrong all along. and that to properly use delay compensation i should first record to a print master audio track, and then layback straight from that track to digi without delay compensation. does this make sense?

in any case i shouldn't be losing any sleep over 1/5 of a frame, but then again it is 1:15am and i'd like to really grasp this.