Latency/Phase when bouncing Triggered drum tracks to audio

RecordingMaster

RecordingMaster

A Sarcastic Statement
Hi all,

More often than not, when i am mixing a rock tune (or other genres) I always end up mixing in triggered samples for the individual drums (mostly just kick and snare), mixed in with the live drums, and sometimes, 100% replacement if it calls for it.

I use Steven Slate Trigger EX and love the quality and usability of it. I am on PT9 on a mac. As we all know, plugins like these cause latency on that given track they are on. So this will cause phasing issues with the drums. For example, let's say I'm completely replacing a snare drum. When I use "Slate Trigger" on the snare track, it will cause the track to play a little later than it actually is, which will cause phasing issues between the snare and the overhead mics. So I use Automatic Delay Compensation and it solves this issue.

Great!...BUT...
What I like to do is once I am satisfied with a sample I have Triggered to my liking (or satisfied with any CPU intensive plugin's sonic outcome on ANY track) is I commit to it and bounce it to a new audio track so I no longer need to have the plugin running. Great? You'd think, but not for drum-related activities. Now when I play the newly-bounced snare track along with the overheads it is causing phasing. Why? Because the track itself doesn't think it has any latency/delay issues, because there is no longer a CPU-intensive plugin inserted on it (which if there was, it would detect the given amount of delay it has and Automatic Delay Compensation would account for it). But ADC is only for playback listening. If ADC is on and I bounce that track, that track with the delay/latency is feeding a clean new track that doesn't know it's original had latency. So now upon playback, ADC doesn't know that new snare audio is delayed. Phasey times at Ridgemont High!

So what to do? Attempting to "drag" the transients in-phase or in time with the rest of the drums is complete BS to me. If I am eyeing it out (while listening), I'd still never get it exactly where it is supposed to go, which will always mean it will never be as perfectly in phase as it sounded back when I was listening to the original Triggered snare with ADC on.

Any knowledgeable help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks a bunch and Happy New Year!
 
Formerly when I used VST triggers on drums (today for some reason I am against triggers :D), if I had some heavy plug-in on the master bus, it would happen that on the snare-trigger track.
 
ianopie said:
Formerly when I used VST triggers on drums (today for some reason I am against triggers :D), if I had some heavy plug-in on the master bus, it would happen that on the snare-trigger track.
Click to expand...
Are you saying that if you used a CPU-intensive plug on the master bus, that it would cause your snare trigger track to delay?
 
PT delay compensation is a little goofy. one sure fire way around it is to actually record the snare track back into the session by playing it, instead of bouncing or rendering it. Just send it to an output routed to an input and record the track. then it should be lined up as well as it is when you are listening to it.
 
Farview said:
PT delay compensation is a little goofy. one sure fire way around it is to actually record the snare track back into the session by playing it, instead of bouncing or rendering it. Just send it to an output routed to an input and record the track. then it should be lined up as well as it is when you are listening to it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, Jay! Actually, that's exactly what I am doing when I refer to "bouncing". My apologies if anyone else also got mislead by my question. I am in fact recording the triggered snare onto a new track. I'll send the output of the track (the one with the trigger plugin instantiated on it) to a bus, then open a new blank audio track and select that bus as the input. Hit record and let it play through. Now the triggered snare is in audio-only form on the new track, with no plugins. I will then hide and deactivate the original with the plugin.

So to reiterate, my issue is that this new audio track has no idea that the original track with the plugin had any latency. It's just receiving signal as if it were an analog input. The original track is delayed a bit but Pro Tools' ADC is correcting it upon playback only (AKAIK) so my ears don't hear the phase. Now on the new track, it doesn't know it's delayed so ADC doesn't correct it and if I zoom in I can see it is slightly delayed compared to the original. And I hear the phasing. And simply flipping the phase switch doesn't help as it sounds phasey either way. Because it's not 180 out.

Hmmm...
 
But the adc on the original track should still be working during the playback you are recording to the new track. It shouldnt be an adc problem. Are you sure you aren't going through the converters? (as in actually converting to analog and back to digital) If you listen to the recorded track and the original triggered track at the same time, do you hear the timing difference?

Manually moving the audio tracks might be the only way to get it lined up again.
 
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