Delay compensation and Aux Tracks

[Terry Wetzel]

that if you created an Auxilliary track and bussed x number of audio tracks to it, then you could insert plugins on the Aux. track without problems. I'm getting the red light, indicating that I am exceeding the available amount of delay compensation available! At this point I have only one audio track with an insert assigned which is a 3 band eq. I am not at my Pt's session right now so I can't explain my prefference set up but if it will help explain the problem I'll follow up with the settings. For right now if anyone can get me started on what may be the problem I'd be most appreciative. This happened once before and I thought that by using the Aux. track to support the plugs the problem would be solved.

[YYR123]

Question - What is the ADC setup too in the Preferences page......

I usually set mine up to long (since i use more than a few plugin's).....

What is yours? What happens when you bypass the EQ plug? Does the issue go away....??? What happens when you put another eq plugin? maybe a 1band maybe another 3rd party plug? same delay?

[albee1952]

Depends totally on the plugin. I would insert that same plugin on a track and see how much latency it has(it might help if you tell us the exact plugin). The stock EQ III plugins show 0 latency and work quite well for most EQ needs.

[Craig F]

2 other thing that can effect it:
Buffer size
any routing that could cause a feedback loop (i.e. reverb or delay feeding back into it's self)

[Terry Wetzel]

This is a reply to all who have offered help so far.
1). The 2 plug ins I inserted on the Aux. track which is a combination of 3 guitar tracks are: 1. 7 band eq. and the Maxim limiting mixer. The other (audio) track has 2 inserts: A simple 1 band eq and a d-verb plug.
Other than those there are no effects.

Play back engine settings:
Play back egine = Audiophile 2496.
H/W buffer size = 256 samples.
Host processors= 4
CPU usage limit = 75%
Host engine, ignore errors during play back/ record- (NOT CHECKED).
Delay compensation engine = short
DAE playback buffer(disk)= Level 2 (default).
Cache size: Normal
Minimum system memory allocation (set at 32mb)-NOT CHECKED)
Plug in streaming buffersize = 250 (level 2-default).
Optimize for streaming content on audio drives (NOT CHECKED).

[ejwells]

Try reducing your processors to 3 (from 4), and increasing your Max CPU to 99%

Also, as a general rule, reverbs are not insert effects, and are best used as send/receive effects

[nst7]

Maxim is the culprit here. It reports 1024 samples of delay, and the "short" setting is for 1023. It's only one sample, but it still exceeds that setting.

As the others mentioned, you can just leave the setting on "Long", which should cover the majority of situations.

Keep in mind that most every kind of limiting plugin, whether Maxim, or other popular ones like the Waves L1, L2, L3, etc. will always have a lot of delay, because they are designed to be "look ahead" limiters. They actually delay the signal coming in and analyze it so they can clamp down on the peaks. This is part of what makes them unique because this is not something a hardware analog limiter can do.

Generally, these are designed for the Mastering stage, where having that kind of delay doesn't matter, because you are just listening to your mix, as opposed to trying to track along with something, etc.

But it's also very common to use them on individual tracks (some of the biggest names in mixing do that), so you're certainly not doing anything wrong if that gives you the sound you're looking for.

But I just wanted to explain why those plugins have much more delay than most others.

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks YYR123. It was set to SHORT. I changed it as per your recomendation to long. I wasn't sure if that mattered.

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks nst7. Not only for pointing out which plugs were the culprit but for the extra knowledge concerning the types.

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks for the tip ejwells. I reset as per your advice. hoping for better results.