How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
bank-manager
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How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by bank-manager » Sat Sep 15, 2018 8:50 am

Hi there,

I'm pretty new to Live. So this is not about "I'm getting latency and have no idea why - check your power settings" ;)

PDC in Live works fine for me. But I'm having an issue with the following situation:
- I got a high latency plugin on the master bus, e.g. Weiss Compressor
- Now when I play my Midi keyboard I get about 1 second delay before I hear the note playing <- all good, it's the PDC
- When I delete the Weiss Compressor from the master bus that delay is gone and I can play in realtime again. But it doesn't work if I just bypass the Weiss, so turning it off doesn't work.

Is there a way to get rid of the delay temporarily without deleting the plugins in question from the fx chain? Any way of PDC-Bypass? I tried the switches in the menu already like "reduce latency when monitoring" but that doesn't do the trick.

Thanks,
Banky.

EDIT: I'm on Live 9.7.7 lite at the moment but today my Push + 10 should arrive so maybe that's gonna fix it?

Angstrom
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by Angstrom » Sat Sep 15, 2018 1:17 pm

Look for the option "reduced latency when monitoring". In the manual or in the menu, I forget which menu, top right, 3rd along 8 down. Something like that. I'm on my phone.

Anyway, when thats activated it gives the fastest audio path out. Ignoring latent plugins on other tracks. It will throw off clocked plugins (like beatclocked LFOs) but it was designed for this.

If theres a latent plugin chan on anither track it will ignore that latency. However if you have very latent plugins on the master then they are still in your active stream so theres no escaping them.

webpro
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by webpro » Sun Sep 16, 2018 5:30 pm

It's under OPTIONS (top left)
Select:
Reduced Latency when monitoring

It did reduced the midi latency. There's still a very, very short delay. Almost undetectable but if you load a piano and start playing, you'll notice the delay.
Don't know for now how to get ride of this 100%. I've read that it's impossible.
Right now i'm using an Acer Windows latop with 6gigs and the original stuff in it. It's 5 years old or something...
With a brand new Keystation49 from M-AUDIO. USB PLugged in

fishmonkey
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by fishmonkey » Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:31 am

the simple answer is don't use high-latency mastering-grade processors when tracking!

if it's losing the settings that is the issue, a workaround is to save the current settings as a preset so you can quickly reload the plugin when you are done with tracking...

bank-manager
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by bank-manager » Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:12 pm

Thanks guys - my Push and Live 10 arrived yesterday so I was pretty busy installing and testing it out. Sorry about the delay.

I didn't have time yet to test this but you're saying that essentially only plugins on the master bus do affect the latency, even if bypassed?

This is not only about "mastering-grade" plugins, a lot of mixing plugins introduce delay that needs compensation, like iZotope Neutron 1/2 (albeit it has a 0-latency-mode) or just any better compressor with lookahead.

Even the old "don't master on the master bus" isn't held up any more by most professionals, although I'm not doing it, I use Ozone for that, cause of the export options and the general production pipeline, having independent project files, etc. This more by the way.

I guess most of us would like to use plugins that introduce delay and plugins on the master bus while mixing or live performing.

EDIT: No, I just tried it. No matter where you have a plugin with high latency, it introduces delay while playing. This is not exclusive to master bus plugins. The option I mentioned in my OP and some people quoted doesn't seem to do anything I could notice with my human ears. Bypassing these plugins doesn't help either and this is the real disappointment for me.

EDIT 2: I have to be a bit more precise I guess - the delay is introduced anywhere a high latency plugin (even a bypassed one) is in the serial signal chain, like on an instrument, bus or group. Well at least PDC handles Sends quite well. I guess this is due to the lack of VST3 support, I've heard you cannot truly bypass VST2 plugins (there also seems to lye the performance difference)

Angstrom
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by Angstrom » Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:52 pm

Nah.
read again:

FIRST : plugins on the master will always introduce latency on all DAWs. For example: tracks 1,2,3,4 ... fed into a plugin on the master bus such as a compressor which has a latency of 15ms. In this case tracks 1,2,3,4 will now be fed through that 15 ms of latency + whatever hardware latency your system has. Tracks 1,2,3,4 fed through a bus track "My bass buss" with a mastering compressor on it with 15 ms of latency ... all those tracks 1,2,3,4 will have that 15 ms of latency. This is also the same on all DAWs, it is not possible to be any other way.

SECOND Live is a live-stage capable application, so while other DAWs will take a deactivated plugin out of the latency calculation when they are deactivated Live does not. when plugins on the master are deactivated it does not recalculate the latency of the audio streams and re-sync them with the new plugin delay calculation - because on stage that would make a big POP noise through the PA. So, Live does not do that. It aims to maintain glitch-free audio. Deactivated plugins are still used to calculate the offset of all tracks fed through them .

THIRD there is no way physically, computationally or magically for any DAW to avoid the processing and calculation time that a plugin uses if the stream passes through that process. If it takes 15 ms to calculate the output of a convolution process then that's what it takes. If a signal passes through this process then it will incur the inherent delay.
The only way to avoid that delay in any DAW is to route a monitored signal direct to your hardware outs and bypass whatever bus processing you are using which incurs the delay. You are free to do this, a lot of people do, but now your audio-processed and latent signals will be out of time with your bypassed signals. This is how all DAWs work, it is how computers work, and how processing works.

FOURTH Live does provide a "fastest path " method, which will ignore other sibling tracks latency, but it cannot ignore the latency of the channel it is passing through. So if Track 1 has 10 ms latency, and 2 has 200ms latency - and the master has 20 ms latency . If we activate "reduced latency when monitoring" track one will now have 30 ms latency and track 2 will have 220 ms latency. They will be getting to the outputs at the detriment of track sync, track one will get to the hardware quicker than track 2 --- but it must still pay all tolls it passes through.

FIFTH
your "major disappointment " and mentions of "don't master on the master bus". You arent mixing, you are tracking. When you set up to track, do it correctly,

Check again what you are doing. Make sure your audio hardware is at around a buffer of 128, set your audio device sample rate to 88 or 96kHz . Ensure that "reduced latency when monitoring" is active, ensure that any plugins on the master out have an absolute maximum of 10 ms latency.

LASTLY It's not about "don't master on the master bus". I have a bunch of plugins on my master bus when playing live. The thing is - I make sure they have a very short latency. This can be seen by hovering over them in Live's device view. Look at the info view bottom right for the latency of each plugin.

EXAMPLE OF A SETUP
This is for live performance, with plugins on the master. My output latency of my audio device - An RME Fireface at 88kHz is 3.2 ms of output hardware latency
With Glue and Saturator on the master I have a (Live induced Master channel) additional latency of 0.41ms

that gives me a total output latency with plugins on the master of 3.61 ms

set a delay to 4ms and see how short a delay this is, it's very very small.

xgman
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by xgman » Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:29 pm

Why is it that simply bypassing (especially mastering plugins) sometimes does not relieve the latency caused by them in the first place. Seems odd. This happens sometimes to me on mac at least.

turtletheory
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by turtletheory » Mon Aug 31, 2020 6:43 am

xgman wrote:
Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:29 pm
Why is it that simply bypassing (especially mastering plugins) sometimes does not relieve the latency caused by them in the first place. Seems odd. This happens sometimes to me on mac at least.
As Angostrom said above, this is why:

SECOND Live is a live-stage capable application, so while other DAWs will take a deactivated plugin out of the latency calculation when they are deactivated Live does not. when plugins on the master are deactivated it does not recalculate the latency of the audio streams and re-sync them with the new plugin delay calculation - because on stage that would make a big POP noise through the PA. So, Live does not do that. It aims to maintain glitch-free audio. Deactivated plugins are still used to calculate the offset of all tracks fed through them .

jlgrimes
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by jlgrimes » Mon Aug 31, 2020 10:15 pm

fishmonkey wrote:
Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:31 am
the simple answer is don't use high-latency mastering-grade processors when tracking!

if it's losing the settings that is the issue, a workaround is to save the current settings as a preset so you can quickly reload the plugin when you are done with tracking...
This.


If you can help it I would either freeze latent tracks or bypass the latent plug-ins. Its good to track with zero latency plugins, or plugins with very little latency where you wont notice like less than a couple of milliseconds is usually imperceivable. I usually disable things like limiters or high quality master bus effects when tracking.

Scoox
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by Scoox » Sun Sep 12, 2021 11:57 pm

turtletheory wrote:
Mon Aug 31, 2020 6:43 am
xgman wrote:
Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:29 pm
Why is it that simply bypassing (especially mastering plugins) sometimes does not relieve the latency caused by them in the first place. Seems odd. This happens sometimes to me on mac at least.
As Angostrom said above, this is why:

SECOND Live is a live-stage capable application, so while other DAWs will take a deactivated plugin out of the latency calculation when they are deactivated Live does not. when plugins on the master are deactivated it does not recalculate the latency of the audio streams and re-sync them with the new plugin delay calculation - because on stage that would make a big POP noise through the PA. So, Live does not do that. It aims to maintain glitch-free audio. Deactivated plugins are still used to calculate the offset of all tracks fed through them .
While I can understand the logic behind this "feature", I'm afraid it's not good enough. It'd be a lot better to provide an option to let users explicitly include or exclude deactivated plugins in the delay calculations. For me this is a big disappointment.

[jur]
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by [jur] » Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:35 am

:roll:
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Scoox
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by Scoox » Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:41 am

[jur] wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:35 am
100% agree
Exactly

[jur]
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by [jur] » Mon Sep 13, 2021 10:06 am

Scoox wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:41 am
[jur] wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:35 am
100% agree
Exactly
:lol: Nice try!
But seriously, just don't use latent plugins when you need realtime. It wouldn't occur to anyone to put 50 ms of latency between an electric guitar and an amp, right? Or to use "50ms later" drum sticks...
The bad design isn't in the software but in the user's eyes in this case.
Ironically, the latent plugin probably doesn't sound better, or your playback system, room and ears can't tell the difference.
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Scoox
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by Scoox » Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:51 pm

[jur] wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 10:06 am
Scoox wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:41 am
[jur] wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:35 am
100% agree
Exactly
:lol: Nice try!
But seriously, just don't use latent plugins when you need realtime. It wouldn't occur to anyone to put 50 ms of latency between an electric guitar and an amp, right?
:D

Of course I wouldn't use high latency stuff when I need realtime, but in the studio it's very normal (compressors/limiters with lookahead, etc).

I had hoped that the options "Delay compensation" and "Reduced latency when monitoring" in the Options menu would help here but they don't. If I have a, say, Pianoteq and a bunch of FX after it causing enough latency to interfere with my playing, the only way to get rid of that delay is to delete the FX, record, then add the FX again. Alternatively, I could record on a different with PDC turned off and then move the MIDI across to the offending track, but it's all workarounds.

One more thing, why is the "Delay compensation" option needed? The only situation I can think I wouldn't want PDC is when monitoring, and for that there is already the "Reduced latency when monitoring" option, which does just that. Maybe I'm misunderstanding these options.

yur2die4
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Re: How to bypass high latency plugins while tracking?

Post by yur2die4 » Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:19 pm

Reduced latency is for reducing latency while you are monitoring.

Delay compensation is for offsetting recorded clips when you are not using reduced latency (or for very fine offsetting just from your interface).

Delay Compensation is used when you are using ‘zero latency’ monitoring setups, where you are hearing direct from your guitar for instance, playing along to a ‘playback’ of your audio session. If you did not compensate, then the guitar track would be delayed from how it was intended to be performed. And if you weren’t doing the ‘zero latency’ setup, you’d Hear an audible delay while you’re actually playing, where the sound comes late, resulting in an unnatural take.

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