Carbon and Delay Compensation

[mnstudio]

I'm thinking of purchasing Carbon, overall for its handling latency in recording.
For this reason I'm wondering how it behaves during recording when "Delay Compensation" is active. I mean... With a usual interface I have to disable Delay Compensation to make recordings that are in sync with existing tracks (which have some plugins on them). What happens with Carbon? Can I let DC ON or I have to disable it in the same way?

[K Roche]

I believe I just leave it on with no issue BUT note I have an outboard HW reverb so I am not trying a non DSP reverb plugin. So when I dub in a new audio track I have all the session tracks in DSP mode. Also I tend to only have DSP compatible plugins going when recording (usually only EQ an sometimes a compressor ) . Also I record all my audio before I introduce any VI recording into the session (just my personal workflow)

[Matt Hepworth]

Delay compensation is disabled on Green tracks while recording. Auxes, too.

[mnstudio]

So it escapes me the total scenario:
Suppose that I have many VI instruments on my project, and I have Delay Compensation enabled.
Then I have to record some audio tracks that have to play obviously in time with the VI tracks.
What does happen monitoring the backing track during recording?
The VI instruments will be delay compensated, while the green tracks no, so will the new recording tracks be in time with the others on my headphones??

[LFO]

Originally Posted by mnstudio

What does happen monitoring the backing track during recording?
The VI instruments will be delay compensated, while the green tracks no, so will the new recording tracks be in time with the others on my headphones??

Yes the recording tracks will be in time with others.

[mnstudio]

Great!
Thanks

[Matt Hepworth]

Originally Posted by mnstudio

So it escapes me the total scenario:
Suppose that I have many VI instruments on my project, and I have Delay Compensation enabled.
Then I have to record some audio tracks that have to play obviously in time with the VI tracks.
What does happen monitoring the backing track during recording?
The VI instruments will be delay compensated, while the green tracks no, so will the new recording tracks be in time with the others on my headphones??

The tracks will sound in time DURING recording, but MAY be out of time on playback. This depends on many factors. In my experience your new tracks may print up to 1500 samples early.

[Matt Hepworth]

Originally Posted by LFO

Yes the recording tracks will be in time with others.

This is not always the case, unfortunately. In the more than two years I've owned Carbon I've encountered this issue at some point every single session I've used it on. It cannot be trusted, at least in MY work flow and MY experience.

I run the same way as described in the Sound on Sound review.

[mnstudio]

This is not always the case, unfortunately. In the more than two years I've owned Carbon I've encountered this issue at some point every single session I've used it on. It cannot be trusted, at least in MY work flow and MY experience.

But in this case it is the same as with any other interface. So I can’t see the advantage
Is it there?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by mnstudio

But in this case it is the same as with any other interface. So I can’t see the advantage
Is it there?

Pro Tools having large latency errors when using other interfaces at least seems to have work arounds. When you have large errors (error is multiples of the disk playback buffer) with hardware inserts or some other situations you get around that by disabling low latency monitoring or disabling allow sends to persist during LLM. I *suspect* that fixes most cases of these reported large latency errors ( <- not commenting on Carbon issues).

Smaller errors in input latency compensation (not ADC) are also avoided by not using ignore errors.

(And separate to these we have the confusion caused by changes in 2023.3 with latency comp on master busses and exceeding ADC limits).

I do not have a Carbon, and have no clue if these other latency issues are in any way related to any issues with Carbon. But the issues we face with other interfaces are a two edged sword. On one hand there are workarounds, so maybe these bugs only waste some folks time, wreck some client's projects, etc. And on the other that Pro Tools has such gross latency related bugs is beyond stupid and should have gotten much more attention from Avid, especially when it might be that changes in the code in recent years introduced at least some of these problems.