Ableton Forum

I know this topic has been raised many times, but I'll write it anyway - this is a cry from the heart.

Do you think there is any hope that a full-fledged PDC will be made in Live?

I really love this program, I have been working in it for about 10 years, I paid a lot of money for updates. But GUI and playback out of sync with high latency introduced by plug-ins, lack of compensation for transport-dependent plug-ins in the insert, all this makes it pointless to use LFO, volume shapers, etc. analyzers, although, in theory, these types of plug-ins need compensation in the first place.
Full-fledged delay compensation is implemented in all DAWs on the market, even in the Reaper, which is developed by one person, so it does not look like this is some kind of super-task that requires a lot of resources to complete. The problem is 100 years old, and one gets the feeling that the reason is more in the ideological plane. I met opinions that the PDC arranged in this way somehow improves the process of live performance ... If so, make two modes, Live and Studio, for example, leave everything as it is in the first one, make a full-fledged PDC in the second, and the ability to switch between them.

Now I am faced with a choice either to completely switch to another DAW or to stay and hope.

And again, do you think there is any hope that a full-fledged PDC will be made in Live?

I assume what we're talking about here is timing issues due to how PDC is implemented - things like ShaperBox (as a common example) not being correctly time-aligned in some cases, and other similar problems. If so:

Full-fledged delay compensation is implemented in all DAWs on the market...

This may not be entirely true. I started using Ableton in addition to Logic because Logic has some significant PDC issues that Ableton either doesn't have, or are more easily worked around in Ableton. I do get the impression though that some other DAWs have fewer issues in this area (maybe none in some cases) than either Ableton or Logic.

You probably already know this, but I'll mention for other readers (just in case) that the timing issues with ShaperBox can be effectively worked around using MIDI triggering. It's an extra step you have to go through, but this is an area where Ableton actually fares better than Logic (where the 'MIDI triggering' workaround is much less convenient).

I've spent a fair amount of time on this topic (having struggled with this for a long time in Logic), and am interested in it. I do think if you have specific, reproducible cases, it might be interesting to share those so others can try them (preferably with stock plugins if possible) and see if they get the same results.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Ableton explicitly states this in the manual - the delay of plug-ins tied to the transport is not compensated, they also reset the delay compensation of the plug-ins that are before them in the chain. And yes, if we are talking about various sidechain functions, this can be solved through a sidechain trigger, it doesn’t really matter audio or midi. Any sidechain input will link back to the grid.
But what about analyzers, for example, Oszillos Mega Scope, etc., which do not have a sidechain entry?
I don't know how PDC is implemented specifically in Logic, I haven't tried it. But I know that in Cubase, Studio One, Reaper, Bitwig, almost in FL Studio, and even in raw Traction, a normally working PDC. I really don't understand the complexity of the implementation, especially for a company like Ableton.

Ableton explicitly states this in the manual - the delay of plug-ins tied to the transport is not compensated...

I noticed that! Other issues aside, it's good that they actually acknowledge it explicitly.

In any case, yes, it's an issue. I don't know why some DAWs handle it better than others, although in some cases maybe the age of the code base and difficulties with fundamentally revising it are issues (at least some of the DAWs that handle this well have much newer code bases). Fortunately for me I haven't run into serious issues with Ableton yet (unlike with Logic), but I realize that I might.