Another delay compensation post (i'm sorry!)

[planetkeys]

Hello. I'm working on a mix just now. I just can't get my head round delay compensation. i have read numerous posts on it but can't quite work out whats happening. I'll give a basic example.

i have two keyboard tracks. One plays a chord on the first beat of the bar and the other track plays a chord on 3+4. its a rythmic thingy. Now when i put RTAS plugs in with no delay comp everything is fine untill you want a little reverb or delay on an Aux track with a TDM plugin (or worse latency an HTDM one) Now that much i know and am used to.

Now when i process one track with TDM plugins and one with RTAS it really effects the musicality so i turn on delay compensation. The thing is, it is still quite lazy. I try short delay comp then long. When i listen to the track it gets quite messy. Now it is only slightly but when you want a groove to happen it is quite frustrating. Not to mention the mess that is midi tracks!! having to set offsets at thousands of samples and keep changing them.

Basically i have found myself slipping audio all over the place trying to get the groove back i had, and doing sums to get my midi back in time. Now i know that most of what i wrote here is obvious and a simple example but what exactly are the work arounds. How do you use an HTDM plugin with that kind of latency. How the hong did you do it before delay comp. Why doesn't delay comp do all the sums for you? am i missing something. I actually think i'll have to buy PT7 so i can just use RTAS. The reason i bought HD was cause i don't have the room for millions of compressors and reverbs. But i am trying to avoid using TDM at all now.
(I don't mean that as a dig at digi by the way)

I would really appreciate any advice about how your systems are set up or how you have dealt with this.
thanks for looking.
Brian

Incase you need info on system.
dual 2gig G5
2gig ram
Pro tools 6.9.2
10.4.2