STRATEGIES TO GET THE BEST OUT LIVE : DELAY COMPENSATION

[Tone Deft]

take a sample, drop it into two tracks with identical settings (volume, panning etc.) drop identical instances of Utility on each track. play the tracks then hit the INV (invert) button on the Utility plug-in, the sound will completely cut out.

instead of two tracks the two sources would be the start of the chain and the end of the chain with all the effects set in 100% dry mode, or bypassed. the unknown there is if the delay is still there when the effects are bypassed and is 100% dry actually dry.

hope that makes sense. I too am at work and mostly have my head in my work, not in Live.

still, the whole thing sounds like a lot of people produce without listening.

[RD444]

Bounce every thing down.

Tempo based fx won't be in sync if you out them in any position but the first one.

Live don't care about you.

Write great music anyway..

[ze2be]

I had this problem since early 2012. The worst cases are with large (7 person) colab projects. (its like a huge mosaic) But it also appears on medium sized 2 person projects. Doesnt seem to happen as much on my solo projects. I/we do increasinly loads of automation on each track, in multiple layers, with multiple side chaining. That might be the bigest reason. (And why the quad core cpu spikes with all tracks in audio and very few fx plugs that use next to no cpu.)

We had a gig recently, and had to DJ some of those tracks.
Heres how we did it:

1. Flatten/record all tracks to audio
2. Add some (ex: 8 bars) of silence in the beginning of the project
3. Add a click sample on 0/the very beginning of the project
4. On this track, set all sends to max "wet" and set all send fx internally to "dry" during the silence
5. Record all the sends to audio tracks
6. Use the click in the beginning of each recorded send track to allign the tracks to zero.
7. Mute the sends, and use the send audio tracks instead.
8. Export/bounce the project


Its not perfect though. This only takes care of the main sends. Theres also the effects on the individual tracks. They can be adjusted like someone previously said in this thread: split tracks into 2: synth/audio + effects. Then adjust track delay on the effects track.

But its even more: Racks aparently produce latency. And also a number of Abletons own plugins. Automation produce latency. Side chaining. How does one go forth with all that? I rack, automate, and sidechain everything. As it stands now its a nightmare to fix these heavy projects. Id be very happy to hear more sugestions on solving this.

In the future im going to bounce/flatten/record to audio as soon as possible, from the very beginning. Add fx, adjust latency, bounce, add fx, adjust latency, bounce, and so on. And use all the tricks available to adjust the latency on the way.


Im very curious how other DAWs experience this, simply to know their take on it.

[RCUS]

@Tone Deft: not sure if I follow your testing scheme still, my bad .

I tried my "concept" last night, and just by way of tweaking the track delay (which i've never used until last night), things tightened up a bit, but not that magical "tightness" i was trying to achieve. for the 2 tracks grouped technique, i really dont think it makes difference if you're tweaking the delay time for the sound source or the delay time for the effects track as in ze2be's example. as long as you're tweaking the timing it seems to be "better" but still not perfect.

@ze2be is there a specific reason you're tweaking the delay on the effects 'track' versus the sound source track?

the more I think about this issue, i suppose it really comes down to problem solving on the fly and listening. not all timing issues have to do with Live too. there could be all sorts of stuff going on, ASDR envelopes come to mind. I think the most important thing that was said in this thread so far was this:

still, the whole thing sounds like a lot of people produce without listening.

and this:

Bounce every thing down.

Tempo based fx won't be in sync if you out them in any position but the first one.

Live don't care about you.

Write great music anyway..

it's a state of mind change really. For me personally, when i first got into Live and DAWs in general, it was all about reading manuals, guides and learning all the technical ins and outs to run the software. I remember one of my early fidget house tunes, trying to do the whole "wobble" thing, using heaps of automation drawn according to Ableton's grid, playing it all back and thinking: "that doesn't sound right, but the automation is drawn correctly. i must've just heard this too many times." put another way, it looked right onscreen, so it MUST be right....right? WRONG!

[ze2be]

still, the whole thing sounds like a lot of people produce without listening.

For me it evolved slowly over time on big projects. After some months I could swear earlyer versions sounded tighter. So I tested the sends latency out by soloing them. To my suprice the latency was massive!

Regarding the question why I bounced down the 8 sends: It was a decision made in regard to a short deadline. It was the fastest way to temporarely fix it. Going through all those 80 some tracks to basicly acomplish the same thing seemed to risky at that moment.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=180529

[RCUS]

so it sounds like you've been chasing this for sometime ze2be. hurts to know it's still not 100% resolved.

i like the idea of turning off delay comp all together and manually adjusting, pre-render, with some sort of 3rd party delay device. the thing is, if you go that route, you are only able to delay later in time, not nudge forward in time, correct?

all signs seem to point to bouncing, my ears and manual time adjustments with audio.

would you mind posting the answer from the Abes here? or PMing it to me? Would love to see what they said.

[3dot...]

as said before...
turning off delay compensation will make your automation/clip envelopes out of time

the strange thing is.. that in some scenarios delay compensation act as it should..
and in some cases not.. it's highly unpredictable..

[ze2be]

What were doing so far is just keep on working while the latency is present. Then in the final master-render hour, render down the sends like I decribed previously and adjust their start position. Also render a dry mix of the project. Then render those together for the final render.

Heres what support said:

We are sorry to hear that you are having such latency problems with Live.

Latency issues can happen for a number of reasons. Combinations of computer power and the complexity of the Live set will all affect latency.

First of all, you can try adjusting the Output Buffer Size (Preferences/Audio). Try to go as low as possible to stop right before some crackling occurs.
This will differ from Live set to Live set as it all depends on how many instruments, tracks, effects etc. are in the live set.

Generally, when a plug-in has a lot of latency, Live's automatic plug-in delay compensation will 'move' all other audio signals in time in order to sync all the tracks of your set.

Thus, it might be interesting checking the overall performance and latency values with less plug ins used in your Live set.  It would be also recommended to check and compare the actual behavior in a another set with a smaller number of used plug ins.

If the overall latency values you're dealing with are getting too high, I'd suggest turning the delay plug in compensation off completely. This way you should be able to identify the plug in which introduces the highest latency values while playing notes on the MIDI controller. It is recommend to remove any external plug ins that are placed on to your master channel while testing.

Also, I can recommend having a look at the options.txt entry 'StrictDelayCompensation': http://www.ableton.com/pages/faq/options_text

If you guys are up for it we can work out an answare together, and ill report back here with what their responding.

[RD444]

You gotta let it go.

Live is great.

But it's totally weird and unprofessional of them not to calculate the PDC per plug.

They are just not bright enough to code that in the program.

People have moaned about it for years.
I didn't notice it on the 30 day demo.

Live is good. Live is fast.
Go too deep under the surface you'll regret it.

Save that for intellectuals making tutorials.

Just remember you can't stack plugs and don't record fast automation .

[RCUS]

@RD444 but goddamnit don't you know we need to stack 50 plugs per track to create that perfect dubstep growl!! LOL

i don't think there is a definitive answer, and that's why we haven't gotten one. per plugin delay compensation is what we want and i don't think we're gonna get it. begs the question: what does Logic do? what does pro tools do? etc.. so many people i know track in ableton and then mix elsewhere. is this why? is this "the ableton sound"?

and where is this magical "strictdelaycompensation" located exactly? if you click that link it doesn't list it and a previous poster said it was integrated now?

*EDIT* - Strict Delay Compensation is indeed built into Live now. It's in the options menu right under Delay Compensation and it's now called "Reduced Latency When Monitoring" and it's not checked off. Somebody correct me, but from what I gather that means StrictDelayCompensation is automatically ON now as a DEFAULT?! I don't know if that's good or bad but i gotta figure it's gonna mess with your head if you ever open up an old set, considering it was OFF by default before.

[3dot...]

"Strict delay compensation" applies to latency when recording audio if I'm not mistaken..
don't think it does much for the mixing stage..

[RCUS]

3dot, check the edit i just made. From what i understood StrictDelayCompensation added latency at the cost of it being static, so checking off Reduced Latency When Monitoring would be the opposite of that... I think?

not sure about you but that does make a difference if you're in the business of splitting bass frequencies, leaving the monitoring to IN then routing the split to a group bus. If i didn't catch this, and went back to open an old set with tight automation on a bass split part, i'm guessing it's gonna sound different...

my head hurts.

[pencilrocket]

But it's totally weird and unprofessional of them not to calculate the PDC per plug.

I remembored that not all plugin reports proper latency to host.

[ze2be]

I havent answared support on this yet. Because of the complexity, its a bit over whelming to grasp.
And I have work and deadlines ocupying most of my time. Gigs almost every week.

With the option.txt do they mean I should try to tweak each plugs settings "under the hood"?

Theres 2 things that would be nice as an outcome of this thread:
1. A solid collection of good tips on tweaking latency.
2. A complete list on how much latency each native plug and rack produce.
under certain circomstances, and in racks. Also some popular 3rd party latencys would be nice.

[RD444]

Strict delay compensation switch

When you record arm a track. Items slightly less out out time.

So when you play its not as bad. The option has always between there

But just hidden in a config file

It isn't that good .

And can be irritating.

Ie
Record drums in nerve
Export MIDI
Strict BS set to on with record enable
Record back into your drum machine
Or records over your drums all light of sync in the vst drum arrangement
Nice one Ableton

Ableton don't care about you or this
Other sequencers can keep multiple plugs in time
live cannot be bothered