The Latency Thread?

[jay mitchell]

Here lets at least agree that in this thread in this context we are talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_(audio) which can and does cause comb filtering if there is a parallel path involved with a different latency (yes, air is a system)

IOW, if there are elements in addition to latency.

 

[Lysander]

the comb filtereing is detected where it is summed. Why is this such a hard concept for you to understand? You are mixing two signals together. One delayed, one not.

AND THE MIX TAKES AS MUCH AS THE ORIGINAL SIGNAL TO REACH YOUR EARS, for Pete's sake!

Whatever. Me is out.

 

[pipelineaudio]

AND THE MIX TAKES AS MUCH AS THE ORIGINAL SIGNAL TO REACH YOUR EARS, for Pete's sake!

Whatever. Me is out.

Not if there's latency

 

[pipelineaudio]

IOW, if there are elements in addition to latency.

Did someone say there wasnt? Pretty sure I used the term "parallel" at least three times in this thread. Why are people being so purposely obtuse?

 

[Orvillain]

@pipelineaudio @Sascha Franck

You both seem to be saying that any amount of timing difference - regardless of whether it is sub 1 millisecond, 1-2 milliseconds, 2-5 milliseconds, or above - can be refered to as 'latency'. Can you please clarify?

 

[pipelineaudio]

@pipelineaudio @Sascha Franck

You both seem to be saying that any amount of timing difference - regardless of whether it is sub 1 millisecond, 1-2 milliseconds, 2-5 milliseconds, or above - can be refered to as 'latency'. Can you please clarify?

If it comes out of a system at a significantly different time that it enters, I would call it latency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_(audio))

But it really doesn't matter, this thread's first post was obviously about the latency a system causes, I even took measurements and screenshots of which latency I was referring to.

 

[pipelineaudio]

 

[pipelineaudio]

I'm going to be going over this on my stream in a few minutes....the legions of pedants that like to chop me off at the knees will definitely hang me if I have this wrong, anyone can feel free to come on and tell me why I'm wrong (I could very well be)

 

[Sascha Franck]

You both seem to be saying that any amount of timing difference - regardless of whether it is sub 1 millisecond, 1-2 milliseconds, 2-5 milliseconds, or above - can be refered to as 'latency'. Can you please clarify?

I can only say "yes, that's true". You may have a different idea of the meaning of the world. That's not just fine, no, I even absolutely get it. I can perfectly understand someone not willing to use the term "latency" when it comes to phase issues, comb filtering and what not - and if I was to describe those, I'd probably not use the term, either.

Still, what I'm saying is this (and it's in fact the same thing just looked at from another POV): One of the things you may run into when dealing with latency, is phase issues and the likes.
And what I'm additionally saying is this: When we're dealing with latencies (of whatever kind), we should rather be aware of all of these aspects, not just about "tactile latency".

See, my example with tracking a singer was 100% real life experience. Happened to me way back. I had very little clue about things, but I had that very powerful PC I've built myself (I think it was when CPUs topped out at around 500-800mHz and when they were single CPUs) with that RME Hammerfall PCI slapped in. Must've been the same time when the first at least sort of usuable guitar amp plugins came up (SimulAnalog Guitar Suite anyone? I think they're the heads behind Overloud these days...), so I was enjoying that an incredible lot, as I was able to run my system @ 64 samples and some RTL values around <5ms.
Then it came to tracking a singer. And we were running into the aforementioned issues. As said, I had no idea what it was - because I was able to track timing critical guitars with ease. So WTF was that stupid singer complaining about with his soft attack "instrument" and his way less than in-the-pocket overall time feel? "It feels so strange" and what not. F***** p***y. That's what I thought. I then checked his headphones singing myself for a bit and that was revealing what he meant - still couldn't explain it.
So we decided to ditch the neat monitoring mix of his voice and monitor through the RME hardware, using TotalMix (was it even already called TotalMix back then?).
Later on however, when we were already checking takes, he said he wanted to do another take or two and I forgot to recall the tracking patch in Total Mix and software monitoring was on for reasons. And all of a sudden he was "maaan, that is a glorious monitoring sound!"
WTF?!?
Ok, it's so long ago I don't exactly recall how I examined things after that event, so long story made short: It turned out that some plugin (I think a compressor) *raised* the monitoring latency - and because of that, the comb filtering phasey-ness went away in favour of what was likely sort of a nice, thickening doubler effect.
This very thing even came up again shortly after, on the LUG (Logic Users Group) when it was still a Yahoo Mailing List, after I started a little comparison thread about interface latencies. There's been another bloke *exactly* confirming my findings of that vocal tracking session.

Now, maybe this is common knowledge these days, back then it wasn't, at least not for me. Anyhow, my takeaway to this day is to be aware of any practical aspects of latency.

And as said, we haven't even touched latency compensation in this thread...

 

[James Freeman]

To close this thread off, make sure you have PDC (plug-in delay compensation) Disabled when monitoring or playing live.
Also, turn off any kind of additional upsampling, most non-ancient plugins have their own internal upsampling, especially if your DAW/project is already at 96kHz or above.

/THREAD

 

[pipelineaudio]

How does talking about interface latency close off a thread about guitar hardware throughput latency?

 

[Sascha Franck]

To close this thread off, make sure you have PDC (plug-in delay compensation) Disabled when monitoring or playing live.

Most hosts do that automatically for all live-threads (and these are the only ones relevant).

 

[James Freeman]

Most hosts do that automatically for all live-threads (and these are the only ones relevant).

Are you absolutely sure about that?

https://www.puremix.net/blog/understanding-plug-in-delay-compensation.html
https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050596812-Why-am-I-Getting-Latency-in-my-DAW-Sessions-
https://steinberg.help/cubase_pro_a...struments_constrain_delay_compensation_c.html
https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&help=Recording.22.html

 

[Sascha Franck]

Are you absolutely sure about that?

Yes. It works as long as you don't put latency introducing plugins anywhere in the path of the live thread. Having said that, you're obviously fuxx0red once you send to a bus with a latency introducing plugin, have one of those on your master bus or whatever. Otherwise, you're fine.
I never ever even just once had to switch off latency compensation in Logic during the last 2 decades.

Fwiw, there's also "low latency mode", but that's something quite different - it's just disabling all latency introducing plugins all together. Which is good to massively spoil the fun, which is why you should only use that as a last resort.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, this link here has some information that could easily be mistaken:

https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050596812-Why-am-I-Getting-Latency-in-my-DAW-Sessions-

It says: "All plug-ins, native or otherwise, will add some latency to the signal flow in your DAW."
This is only halfway correct. Or rather, it should say: "All plug-ins, native or otherwise, will add some latency to the signal flow in your DAW - but very often, that latency is taken care of by the buffer size, so all processes can be completed within that very buffersize"
There's plugins managing to work within the latency boundaries set by your buffersize selection and there's others that don't. Most plugins often used for realtime stuff such as tracking through them (such as amp sims), usually don't add to the general host latency.

 

[Jim Roseberry]

Some DAW applications do not automatically disable PDC (Cakewalk by Bandlab being one).
There is a global PDC bypass option in the Control bar.

For those who don't know...
If latent plugins are inserted anywhere in the project (not just on the track you're recording/monitoring in realtime), then *all* other audio is delayed by that exact amount of latency. This is to maintain proper sync between tracks.
Before automatic PDC, you had to account for latent plugins manually (ProTools)... and it was a pain.

I'd suggest not using latent plugins while tracking.
One less thing to think/worry about

 

[James Freeman]

Some DAW applications do not automatically disable PDC (Cakewalk by Bandlab being one).
There is a global PDC bypass option in the Control bar.

Thanks Jim.
I wasn't sure about Cakewalk because the the manual isn't very clear about Input Monitoring and PDC.

What about guitar amp modeling plugins, are they typically latent?
What if I have monitor calibration plugin on the main bus which I send the guitar plugins to?

 

[Sascha Franck]

If latent plugins are inserted anywhere in the project (not just on the track you're recording/monitoring in realtime), then *all* other audio is delayed by that exact amount of latency. This is to maintain proper sync between tracks.

But that's just horrible. All latent tracks need to be played early (which is very well possible by simply raising the pre-roll). It's exactly what Logic and Cubase are doing.

 

[Sascha Franck]

What about guitar amp modeling plugins, are they typically latent?

Most aren't. Some add latency when you load an IR.

 

[James Freeman]

Okay, I just tested with several (3) Linear Phase EQs on a track and got a huge 2 second latency with Helix Native on the other track while monitoring.
I confirm, Cakewalk does NOT have auto-off PDC on live input monitoring tracks, you have to manually turn ON the little PDC button to override this behavior and remove the delay if you use latent plugins on any other track, as Jim said.