question about plugin latency

[Mountainmirrors]

Hi -

Is it true that a plugin with a large degree of latency will cause a delay when you listen to it in a session, but it doesn't affect mixdown?
In other words, if you have a small annoying delay on a track because of a plugin, do you need to move it a few ticks, or will it right itself when the project is mixed down?

Thanks.

 

[Farview]

I don't know about the program you are using but most of the time, if you hear it, it will mix down like that. Some of these programs have latency compensators (nuendo, cubase, etc) so you wouldn't hear this happening

 

[ad0lescnts]

nope it'll mix down exactly the same as you hear it during playback

T

 

[darnold]

I dont agree with that. Ive found that if the play back has a latency of 30 milliseconds, it goes back to normal when you mix it down. Unless you are doing a real time mixdown of course. But if you sum it through the computer the processing is not done real time. Thats why its still important to monitor at less latency because it could completely change after mix down.

The only reason why there is latency with real time plugins is because it takes that long for the computer to process the plugin depending on the buffer size. When you do a non realtime it processes it as if had actually bounced.

Its the same reason why things often tighten up a little bit after mix down and why computer summing isnt quite perfect.

danny

 

[RhythmRmixd]

I'm having the exact same problem with plug-in latency. I'm running MOTU Mach 5 sampler thru Digital Performer 3, using a MOTU 828 MKII. Mach 5 is set up to record onto MIDI tracks in DP3, but is set up as a realtime plug-in on any audio track. My tempo click in DP3 is always ahead of any Mach 5 instrument I record onto a MIDI track. Since Mach 5 only works as a realtime plug-in, is there any way around this? I'm using an EMAC with plenty of extra RAM I put in, as well as an additional Firewire Hard Drive with 160G. The processing speed is 700mhz. Is this correctable?

 

[darnold]

Its all dependant on your buffer size. Make sure you have it set to us ASIO drivers instead of the multimedia or WDM. The latency for those are huge.

Using ASIO drivers with a buffer size of 128 should give you a latency of about 3 milliseconds on 44.1. Thats not even noticeable. But if you are using a driver that has 1 second delay then its not even useable.

I am not fimiliar with DP3 so i cant tell you exactly how to set these. With a 700Mhz however you will need to be carefull with how many plugins you use at 128 buffer size. Bring it up to 256 if you have problems, and 512 is workeable but it has noticeable latency.

Danny

 

[Farview]

If you know how far behind the midi plays, move the midi track to the left by that amount to compensate

 

[RhythmRmixd]

That's definatly my first problem. I'm running my buffer size at 1028, but whenever I bring it back down I start to run into memory problems. I suppose I could run just Mach 5 by itself (no other MOTU plug-ins) with the low buffer setting, and once I get my MIDI tracks recorded I could close out of MachFive and bring my buffer settings back up while mixing my MIDI tracks into audio soundbites (using other realtime plug-ins for further processing). I guess I'll just play around with it and see what happens.

 

[ocnor]

What I do sometimes rather than run the FX in Realtime is to make a copy of the track and "apply" heavy amounts of the FX to that track. Then I can blend the two tracks together with the volume control to get the desired effect without eating up the CPU.