How does latency occur in project, track and rendering?

[Rockis.]

I’m suddenly wondering about latency on project and rendering. I haven’t really thought about this deeply but i started to think about it recently.

My question is,
If i use lots of different heavy plugins on different tracks, how its latency occurs when i playback the project?

i’m assuming 3 cases that would occur.
But i don’t know which one is right or if none of them is right.

1. when i press play, the entire project starts after huge delay(lets just say the delay is really huge for simple explanation and extreme case)
2. the output of each track is played back with different timing because each track has different amount of delays.
3. all tracks are played back at same timing but each plugin works later on each media item differently after i press play(for example, lets say
EQ , compressor and de-esser work after huge delay on items. So some tracks sound weird and de-esser missed all sibilances.)

Which one is right?
And then if i render the project, how will be the result of it?

 

[rob aylestone]

Well, luckily for me, I press play and the music starts. Allway in sync. None of the plug ins start late or early.

Decent plug ins feature compensation. If they need more time to do things, then they can start early - but as we measure latency in milliseconds, if that means playback is delayed a fraction of a second, we'd never noticed.

Are you just researching, or have you got this actual problem? Memory, drive speed and processor nowadays makes latency from plug in processing less common - but if you are one of those, like one of my friends who uses hundreds without even thinking, then all three of your possibilities can happen.

 

[Farview]

Plugin latency was an issue 20 years ago, but all days that I know of compensate for it so the playback is always in sync.

The daw figures out the plugin latency of each track, then adds the proper delay to each track to keep them in sync.

 

[Rockis.]

Well, luckily for me, I press play and the music starts. Allway in sync. None of the plug ins start late or early.

Decent plug ins feature compensation. If they need more time to do things, then they can start early - but as we measure latency in milliseconds, if that means playback is delayed a fraction of a second, we'd never noticed.

Are you just researching, or have you got this actual problem? Memory, drive speed and processor nowadays makes latency from plug in processing less common - but if you are one of those, like one of my friends who uses hundreds without even thinking, then all three of your possibilities can happen.

It is more of a curiosity than an actual problem. I just want to know the principle of how latency happens and how DAW like reaper fix and match those latency.

But when i used izotope RX in a track, i could notice the screen visual timing and actual sound didn’t match in playback.(maybe this is another story here)

 

[Farview]

The daw figures out the plugin latency of each track, then adds the proper delay to each track to keep them in sync.

The plugins report the latency to the DAW. The DAW does the calculations of all the latencies on all the tracks. It find the track with the highest latency and delays the rest of the tracks enough to line them all up. Each track can have a different latency compensation delay.