Render noticeably out of time with parent project

[thejive]

After rendering some drums and placing the rendered file back into the parent project I noticed a timing discrepancy; rendered snare and kick (blue) later than they should be (yellow).

The snare drum resample track (orange) is slightly less out of time than the rendered tracks.

I have tempo automations throughout this project and the timing discrepancy gets worse as the track progresses. The screenshot is from the very end of the track. I've rendered with a buffer size of 512.

Is this normal? Any advice on what I can do to not sound sloppily out of time? I often have to produce a drum track which is later inserted into a master project with the other instrumentation so this issue is frightening!

Thank you!

Jiver

[jestermgee]

What is your sample frequency setup as in Ableton and what did you render to?

[thejive]

I'm working at 48khz 32bit throughout.

[jestermgee]

Did you render your file to 48Khz or to 44?

[thejive]

Rendered to 48khz.

[eyeknow]

Is this the PDC thing rearing it's ugly head?

[thejive]

I get the latency even when I disable plug-ins! I'm guessing it has something to do with the tempo automations (since the delay in the rendered audio gets more as the track progresses through the tempo changes). Does anyone have any advice or is this something I have to live with?

Cheers!

[Pitch Black]

Any plugins or effects on your Master channel when you render? - that could be causing the issue. Sometimes when I render a project from Live or Logic with a heavy Master Output fx chain it leads to dead air on the front of renders. It only happens infrequently, so I've never bothered to track down the exact conditions that causes it - I just adjust for it if it becomes a problem.

EDIT - just re-read your last post. The fact that the offset is changing as the track progresses would seem to implicate the tempo automation. Can you test by temporarily deleting the tempo automation and doing a test render and see if that's ok? Sorry this is not a solution, but it might help Abes track down that problem...

[thejive]

No plug ins on the master channel. The time difference is much less at a fixed tempo, but still present.