Plugins / Delay Compensation / Timing / Downbeat [PT-263943]

[RTGraham]

Originally Posted by JingleDjango

I submitted a support case today.

Thanks JingleDjango.

[RTGraham]

Originally Posted by Chris August

Just throwing my hat in the ring on this as well... I've actually had this issue with Pro Tools for years. Trying to use plugins like Movement from Output and Tremolator from SoundToys. Always had to commit the Instrument track then use the plugin. Silly. Yeah, let me just imagine what that will sound like on this...

Thanks Chris.
Yeah, I've had this issue for years also.
But because it's the presence of latency in the session that throws the timing out of whack, and because that topology often changes over the course of working on a project, and because towards the beginning of a project there are usually fewer latency-inducing plugins while towards the end of a project there are usually more, etc., etc., etc... it was easy to think, for a long time, that it was just random or unpredictable or sometimes that I was even just imagining it.
But it's not, and I wasn't. Now that we've started properly chasing this down, it's quite formulaic and *very* easy to recreate in a simple way. Now it's just a matter of getting Avid to believe that this is actually worth prioritizing. Because, you know, why should they care about what we want to try creatively with our audio?

Or at least that's the way their approach to it so far seems.
And that's what irks me.
Because this is not just about bedroom producers making Ibiza-friendly bangers in the middle of the night.
This is also about being able to use the newest emerging tools in creative ways across ALL genres.
And this is also about running sessions in legendary studios with multi-million-selling producers saying "hey - can you make the whole track pump in time with the music? We need to hear what that would be like."
And this is ALSO about the simple ability to rely on the timing of our audio - including how it's being processed - NOT CHANGING from what we painstakingly dialed in, just because a plugin got added somewhere else in the session.

Ok, rant over.

Thanks again for joining the conversation.

[PhiltheGreek1]

Hi,

I've just found this thread - I intend to read through and research everything early next month when a big project is out the way..
I've had this problem with my system for years - it's such a relief to find this thread!!
I've posted about this a lot and the mess that can happen as the low end disappears and reappears just wasn't on my radar.

In the past I used PTs HD with a fancy Accel system mainly, and because of the genres of interest for my music writing and mixing work, I used side-chaining A LOT and it became part of my sound and technique.

When I lost the Accel system it was round the time that AVID were losing their mojo with the pricing and future proofing of the Pro Tools licensing so I decided, on some advice from KMR audio, to just get a bad ass Mac 5,1 and stick to my software of PTs HD (12.5.2) and go from there.

There has been so much pain over the years.. because when I was trying to relate mixes 'going to sh*t' after it sounding amazing I didn't clock that it was around the end of the mix, when the mix was busy and I was using side chaining techniques and LFO tool to pump and make space. Because all of these were not actually hitting the beats where they should (and what I was used to being solid with the Accel system) the mixes would fall apart and become a muddy mess.
For a while I just thought it was perhaps too many plugins, or some kind of timing bug in bussing hierarchy.

Even yesterday I recalled a really good mix for someone which had side-chaining to Pro MB on a few channels, and they were like constantly moving goalposts that had to be constantly auditioned through the plugin and the key track moved (keeping copy of the key track) to coincide and the mx became even better.

I wondered if the problem was the lack of the hardware card and just using the software 'natively'. I guess that is not the case?

Anyway, I will go though all the steps and links on this thread so thank you so much for posting it!

Cheers,
Phil

[RTGraham]

Originally Posted by PhiltheGreek1

Hi,

I've just found this thread - I intend to read through and research everything early next month when a big project is out the way..
I've had this problem with my system for years - it's such a relief to find this thread!!
I've posted about this a lot and the mess that can happen as the low end disappears and reappears just wasn't on my radar.

Thanks Phil.

This issue has been a major time-efficiency obstacle the past week or so, on a project we were adding production elements to while already in the mixing phase of the project. Every time we made an adjustment to a track elsewhere in the project, LFOTool needed its timing manually adjusted.

Add AutoTune to a vocal track to tame some problem notes?
Adjust LFOTool on the synths.

Remove AutoTune from a different track because the vocalist re-recorded a better (and more accurate) performance?
Adjust LFOTool on the piano and bass.

Print the virtual guitar amps to audio?
Adjust LFOTool elsewhere in the session.

And of course all the adjustments basically have to be by ear, so it's time-consuming.

Just today though, I've stumbled across something in the reference guide while looking for something else... and what I stumbled across is directly related to this issue and the fact that Pro Tools simply doesn't handle this particular kind of calculation for us. In the attached screenshot I've circled the bit that mentions the use of MIDI-controlled plugins on audio tracks. This confirms that at least part of what's happening is that when a MIDI-controlled plugin is active, Pro Tools considers it important to treat that as a "low-latency" path. So once the plugin is in there, apparently there's no automatic compensation going on for that track.
I can see how this would make sense in terms of making a virtual instrument playable, but from the perspective of using timing-based plugins for mix purposes, they really should take the compensation into account instead.
Even for the purposes of using an arpeggiator in a virtual synth, the synth should be delay-compensated if the track is only in playback mode (instead of being record-enabled).

This is certainly not impossible to program. Logic does it properly under most circumstances. Ableton, by comparison, does not - its behavior is like Pro Tools in that regard. But in this day and age this is something that the user should not have to manually adjust every time the session topology changes.

[RobertDorn]

As long as you don't use plugins that add high delay numbers everything works fine. As soon as you ad plugins like fabfilter MB or L 2 , or any random UAD aax plugin that will easily add 2000+ samples plugin delay, everything falls apart. In particular midi. But even on (committed) audio tracks, time aligned plugins like LFO tool, Soundtoys tremolator etc become a mess.

Also, once there a certain amount of plugin delay in the session, try to play an arpeggiated patch in Omnisphere or something like Native Instruments Session Guitarist... without disabling plugin delay on the instrument track it's a complete mess. Once the plugin delay is disabled, the actual time of the midi notes is not played back correct anymore. I actually cannot imagine that any electronic music producer does use pro tools for the production process ...

I now use LUNA for productions that need this kind of time-based plugins. It actually has this issue fixed since version 1.0.0 while also providing very low latency midi recording when rec arming an instrument track.

I contacted avid support again last week about this major issue, but they simple don't reply to the case.

Originally Posted by RTGraham

Thanks Phil.

This issue has been a major time-efficiency obstacle the past week or so, on a project we were adding production elements to while already in the mixing phase of the project. Every time we made an adjustment to a track elsewhere in the project, LFOTool needed its timing manually adjusted.

Add AutoTune to a vocal track to tame some problem notes?
Adjust LFOTool on the synths.

Remove AutoTune from a different track because the vocalist re-recorded a better (and more accurate) performance?
Adjust LFOTool on the piano and bass.

Print the virtual guitar amps to audio?
Adjust LFOTool elsewhere in the session.

And of course all the adjustments basically have to be by ear, so it's time-consuming.

Just today though, I've stumbled across something in the reference guide while looking for something else... and what I stumbled across is directly related to this issue and the fact that Pro Tools simply doesn't handle this particular kind of calculation for us. In the attached screenshot I've circled the bit that mentions the use of MIDI-controlled plugins on audio tracks. This confirms that at least part of what's happening is that when a MIDI-controlled plugin is active, Pro Tools considers it important to treat that as a "low-latency" path. So once the plugin is in there, apparently there's no automatic compensation going on for that track.
I can see how this would make sense in terms of making a virtual instrument playable, but from the perspective of using timing-based plugins for mix purposes, they really should take the compensation into account instead.
Even for the purposes of using an arpeggiator in a virtual synth, the synth should be delay-compensated if the track is only in playback mode (instead of being record-enabled).

This is certainly not impossible to program. Logic does it properly under most circumstances. Ableton, by comparison, does not - its behavior is like Pro Tools in that regard. But in this day and age this is something that the user should not have to manually adjust every time the session topology changes.

[albee1952]

Not sure if this will help anyone, but sometimes just turning Delay Compensation(under the Options menu) off and back on will help things(sometimes the delay compensation gets confused).

2 other things can can cause bogus delay compensation are:
1-a send the goes nowhere(example: you decide to send your vocal to an aux track with a delay on it. Later on, you change your mind and delete the aux track. With the send still on the vocal track, this can confuse things, especially if you go to record an overdub on that vocal). Removing the send is the fix.
2-if you make a habit of busing thru more than 1 aux track in series, things can go bad(example: all drum tracks routed thru an aux track, then that aux is routed thru another aux track).

[RobertDorn]

Thanks Dave,

However, I'm able to make a mess of every newly created pro tools sessions with 1 instrument track or 1 audio track in 10 seconds. Just load a random 2000+ samples delay adding plugin on a track, and midi timing falls apart. Same goes for audio and instrument tracks that contain a time-based plugin like Effectrix , tremolator, waves pumper etc.

Originally Posted by albee1952

Not sure if this will help anyone, but sometimes just turning Delay Compensation(under the Options menu) off and back on will help things(sometimes the delay compensation gets confused).

2 other things can can cause bogus delay compensation are:
1-a send the goes nowhere(example: you decide to send your vocal to an aux track with a delay on it. Later on, you change your mind and delete the aux track. With the send still on the vocal track, this can confuse things, especially if you go to record an overdub on that vocal). Removing the send is the fix.
2-if you make a habit of busing thru more than 1 aux track in series, things can go bad(example: all drum tracks routed thru an aux track, then that aux is routed thru another aux track).

[RTGraham]

I've just re-tested this in 2021.6.0 and I'm afraid the behavior is still the same, even though native sidechain delay compensation has finally been implemented.

But the fact that sidechain delay compensation has now been put in place makes me cautiously hopeful that this timing issue will finally get addressed as well.

[Henning Svoren]

I've had problems with this for years as well.
I like the sidechain updates in 2021.6, but agree that's this issue will hopefully be prioritised now.

When commiting a track it falls into the right spot, but pretty difficult to program f.ex. a vocoder when everything you do sounds off.

[RTGraham]

Just a quick update, as I've thought through this a bit more while working on projects recently.

• This does seem to be squarely related to the choice of how to implement low-latency realtime live performance of virtual instruments. For the purpose of being able to play a virtual instrument in realtime using a MIDI controller, Pro Tools effectively has to ignore delay compensation for the track hosting that virtual instrument. Otherwise any latency anywhere in the session would result in the virtual instrument not being responsive enough. So for a VI to be playable in realtime, not only does its own track have to avoid any latency-inducing plugins, but Pro Tools has to exclude the track's MIDI data from being latency-compensated.

• HOWEVER - once a track is strictly a playback track - i.e. isn't accepting realtime MIDI input from outside Pro Tools - it should, under all circumstances, be properly delay compensated. Not just with regard to audio, but with regard to the MIDI information triggering it.
The same should hold true for audio plugins that rely on MIDI for their control or timing, including simply knowing where the measure boundaries occur in time. There's no reason, in today's world, for Pro Tools not to properly account for delay compensation when telling a rhythmic gate or time-synchronized tremolo where the downbeat is.

• I've accidentally found a workaround that sometimes seems to correct the timing issues. While working with a vocoder plugin, I needed to find a way to get the MIDI and audio (the carrier triggers and the modulator signal) to line up - because of course even though the source information was correctly on the grid, the playback was out of sync. In an effort to manually compensate for some information being perceived as occurring early, and other information being perceived as occurring late, I inserted Voxengo's "Latency Delay" plugin in the track's first insert slot, figuring that I could manually adjust the audio signal's timing.
Lo and behold, with all of the plugin's settings at 0 - so no actual timing shift - everything suddenly magically lined up.
I think it was a function of Pro Tools considering the track as requiring delay compensation, instead of considering it to be a "realtime MIDI" stream that should be excluded from compensation.
This workaround doesn't always work. Sometimes something's still slightly off, dependent on the overall PDC topology of the session. But sometimes it does get everything in sync.