Pro Tools Low-Latency Monitoring Issue

CaseyCayce

New member
I left Logic Pro for Pro Tools thinking I was making a move up to a more professional DAW. After two weeks of intensive learning and migrating a huge Logic project into PT, I was finally ready today to get back to work and record. I armed my vocal track, put my headphones on, engaged Pro Tools, and got a latency delay. To be expected. Went into the Options menu, activated the Low Latency setting, hit the record button, and all monitoring for the track disappeared.

I've spent the last three hours scouring the internet for solutions to why this would happen, having exchanges with the Avid community, and what I've learned so far is that Pro Tools doesn't allow monitoring on a track while Low Latency is engaged. The recommendation—the PIMITIVE recommendation—is to monitor the raw input of the mic through my PreSonus interface. That, supposedly, is as close as a person can get in Pro Tools to real-time track monitoring with Low Latency on. The problem with that solution is that monitoring the interface input doesn't show me the effect track plugins are having on the signal, and that's important (just a wee bit, don't you think?).

Am I missing something? Why have a Low Latency option, then not allow its effect to be heard?

Thanks for any feedback.

Cayce
 
When recording and monitoring through plugins reduce buffer size to the lowest possible without causing issues and turn off delay compensation and LLM.
 
It's really no different from any other DAW. Either monitor direct through the interface for low latency or monitor through the DAW effects with whatever latency that causes. You can adjust buffers to minimize it but it takes more time to process the signal and route it through the computer than it does to send it back out the interface through a shorter path.
 
Am I missing something? Why have a Low Latency option, then not allow its effect to be heard?

Hi,
Yes, the name is a bit misleading.
What it really means is 'Disable Protools monitoring'. The idea is that you enable low latency monitoring because you want to use hardware monitoring.

I would disable it, then disable 'Delay Compensation' (or remove any delay introducing plugins), then reduce the buffer size to 256 or lower.

I don't disable Delay Compensation myself, but I never had delay-introducing plugins whilst tracking.
If I do end up having to overdub something on to a track that has compressors/tuners with great delay, I just record to a fresh new track then move the wav into place afterwards.
 
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