Audio latency in heavy sessions

[gmontufar]

Hey all,

I usually work and end up with very large sessions with a ton of plugins and soft synths (we all do right?), and all the way up to the mixing and finishing up stage, I constantly need to add new sounds, change others, etc etc. It gets frustrating because I want to use my MIDI keyboard controller, but latency is insane because I’m at a 1024 or 2048 buffer. That makes my keyboard unusable. On the other hand lowering buffer size makes my session go well over the 100% mark in processing, and I can’t work. I do the usual freezing tracks, deleting unnecessary stuff, but sometimes it doesn’t work. How do you get around this? What audio interfaces are you using and do they make a difference? Ideas?

[jestermgee]

What audio interfaces are you using and do they make a difference? Ideas?

Question is, what interface are you using. Also,
-what OS
-system specs
-How many tracks are you talking and what plugins are you talking?

[TLW]

Some plugins have a “built in” latency of their own - typical examples are compressors and limiters with a “look ahead” function, convolution reverbs and some instruments which use samples or do a lot of internal processing. If you hover over the plugin’s header in the track edit window Live’s own plugins and some others reveal their internal latency in the bar at the bottom of the window. Waves tell you the latency of all their plugins in the technical data for each plugin on their website.

Adding any plugin that requires much time to do its calculations can add noticeable latency to a project and it can be surprising just how much some can add - as much as several hundred milliseconds.

Keeping cpu usage reasonable is also obviously important. If freezing lots of tracks or freezing every track doesn’t help it might be worth checking if anything on a return bus or the master bus has high latency or cpu implications.

[jonljacobi]

Latency is a fact of DAW recording if you stay completely within the digital realm (no outboard). With digital plug-ins and FX more so. This isn't much of an issue with modern computers and interfaces and normal small or simple projects, but if you want to go crazy with plug-ins it will become a factor. There's really nothing to be done about plugin latency other than throw more computing power at it.

Barring that, either do your composing and recording up front with minimal or no plug-ins/FX, or freeze tracks. Playing audio tracks is child's play comparatively and invokes minimal latency.

[oratowsky]

the bottleneck here with what you describe isn't so much the interface but more the CPU stuff.

like TLW said mastering processors or other plugins can add a lot of latency that isn't related to buffer size.

if you use delay compensation then the latency of your entire session is time compensated by the delay introduced by the highest latency plugin in your session.

for myself and the way I work, without delay comp on, I feel like writing with a piano like you describe is basically acceptable at 1024 buffer size..

Poor performance at lower buffer sizes can be caused by other things too. Runaway or malware processes, overheating (very common on Apple laptops!) , other open applications.

Also, in my world, the processor hogs in my projects aren't so much synths but more vocal chains, which can have 30+ plugins per chain.

I feel your pain. it is always an eternal struggle of new computers getting faster, then fancier plugins coming out in the years that follow.

[baseinstinct]

My Thinkpad x230 handles 15-20 tracks full of all sorts of stuff easily until a threshold is reached, which is when it is rather difficult to recover the snappiness of the project by a single freeze.

Sluggish effect on return bus can be a problem, although sometimes restarting the project does make a difference.

"Collect all and save" does help reduce audio hiccups.

I wonder how Infekted Mushroom have their computer manage with their projects of 320 tracks. The are using midi controllers most of the time.
They might be bouncing to audio, but this would require tremendous self-discipline, with all the changes required along the way.
Could this be some stellar computer specs?

[TLW]

Ton Holkenborg’s Junkie XL youtube channel has a lot of information about his studio. Besides the biggest, wall filling Moog-style modular I’ve ever seen and more other superb synths than any one man has a right to have, his computer setup is massive. A very big cupboard full of blade servers for data storage and several hefty computers running in parallel doing different tasks so his enormous sample collections aren’t running on his main DAW all the time and so on.

Throw enough money at a technology or audio problem and lots of times you can make the problem go away. The really difficult thing is getting enough money in the first place.