Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ross Hogarth]

I got my hands today on Pro Tools 6.4 .....
This is very cool. They now have automatic delay compensation.
When you guys see how random the delay build up is on the TDM buss and how frighteningly large the delay compensation is down the line of channels in the mixer, it is absolutely no wonder why mixing in the box sounds so freaky sometimes. Didgi really did well here with this new software and it is their own Microsoft kind of way of making the Mix+ completely outdated. When you Mix+ guys get your hands on this software you are gonna be very depressed.....
I just wanted to give a heads up and a quick report ...

[Kirk_Candlish]

Ross Hogarth wrote on Wed, 05 May 2004 22:07

.. how frighteningly large the delay compensation is down the line of channels in the mixer...

Care to tell us what kind of delays did you end up with here ?

The next question that comes to mind is what kind of power does the auto-compensation take, either from the CPU or DSP ?

I've got the upgrade sitting on my desk and just need to find time to install it.

Thanks for any info.

[j.hall]

that's really cool....

i used to dred the middle of a mix session when i'd start looking at the delay times and nudging the tracks around.

when do they plan to put a better word clock in their hardware?

is the auto delay compensation a plug in, or a feature you enable?  or does it just do it regardless of what you want?

[Fibes]

This is really bad news to me, just like when Bob Dylan was asked what product he would sell out for 30 years ago he said underwear, I've been in the same frame of mind with Digi and ADC. My world is about to end and Bob is in a Victoria Secret commercial.

[Ross Hogarth]

A little more detail ...
What we thought we knew was that you could look at the delay by toggling thru the window and see how many samples was being added by the plugin on your channel. Say you had a deesser and a compressor and that told you it was say 20 samples. Say this was on an aux buss of a blend of voocals or say drums or whatever. We thought you could nudge the track however many samples and make up for the latency. NOOOOO ..... what I noticed yesterday is as the tracks go father away from say the master aux fader or down the mixer, the delay is not only the plug virtual delay but an added TDM buss delay that is in some relation to the mixer ..... voodoo on one level but a virtual nightmare on another if you think you are making up for the virtual plug in latency and not knowing that there actually is a whole other delay you would never know unless like now you can actually see in the new delay compensation window the total delay compensation per channel.
I mean on some channels with only a single 7 sample plug in , a channel part of a group, the delay compensation was 137 samples.
Now do the math. every 48 samples you have a millisecond at 48k
so we are talking close to 3 milliseconds. Try and delay your snare 3 milliseconds from your kick and your vocal say 4 milliseconds from your drums ....whoa nelly where did the groove go not only to mention that basically our whole rig really has been in some ways a big flanger.
I know this is a severe look at it but it was a fucking epiphany to see with my own eyes. This upgrade has now made the pro tools mixer a real mixer .....

[Ross Hogarth]

j.hall wrote on Thu, 06 May 2004 06:47

that's really cool.... i used to dred the middle of a mix session when i'd start looking at the delay times and nudging the tracks around. is the auto delay compensation a plug in, or a feature you enable?  or does it just do it regardless of what you want?

The delay compensation is automatic for not only plugins and also for
i/o's. You get a window to see what is going on and then a line of code that allows you to move tracks as per your own desire if you wish ...very cool . .. also has some other features that are cool but not earth shattering like organization of your plugins by type, track arming on the ply, input on channels without arming ...they are trying make the box as close to a mixer and a tape machine as possible ...I'm impressed and i really am a born cynic ...

[Fibes]

Quote:

track arming on the fly, input on channels without arming

All this time and they are just gettng around to fixing issues that the analog world has been doing flawlessly for eons. I'll be damned, now i gotta spend 20 grand on something else. AAAHHH!

[natpub]

Ross Hogarth wrote on Thu, 06 May 2004 10:11

The delay compensation is automatic for not only plugins and also for i/o's.

I wonder if it only applies to Digi I/O, or if it actually is measuring send and return times regardless of converters used. Some of their mad plan appears to involve a "microsoft" type arm-twisting where to get all the features one must use their entire line of gear. Bleh.

Enquiring minds...


-K

[j.hall]

the last time i was a heavy PT user was 5.1....

at that time, apple click on the "vol" bar in the mixer window would calculate delay (in samples) of whatever was going on, on the track.  i was always told that it wasn't a set number displayed, it was an actual calculation.

i just remember that the waves plug-ins were the worst offenders of latency.  every thing would be maybe 100 samples off, drop a waves plug and now your 15k samples off.

[Michael Greene]

I installed 6.4 on Friday and messed around a bit.  Did a mix today and also played around with some mixes that I had done in the last week by turning ADC on and off.  I can only say:

Aaaahhhhhhhhh,   It sounds so much better.  Hey I don't like a flanger on the drums all the time.  

Me likey very much.

Michael Greene

[Kirk_Candlish]

I've been pulling up old mixes and it's kind of scary how much they needed this fix.

[Michael Greene]

I couldn't agree more.  All those things that felt a bit off but I couldn't put my finger on now sound right.  I also always used time adjuster to line up most if not all of my tracks but it still never felt perfect.  I have had a hard time believing that I can hear the difference of a 3 or 15 sample delay but  when you switch between ADC on and off it really makes everything pop more and sound smoother.  
Now it makes me want to remix everything I have done for the last 5 years, especially the film score work that really sounds better with the ADC on.

Michael Greene  

[Fibes]

It's good to know that i haven't been insane for the last few years. Uh, at least when it comes to DAW delay.

[Zoesch]

Fibes, you weren't...

BTW having not seen 6.4 yet, is it full ADC like in Logic/Nuendo (All channels and busses as well as all the outputs) or is it only on channels?

[j.hall]

the funny part about the ADC is that it took them so damn long to add it to the software.  the old sin clavier (sp) systems had it.......gimme a break man!

when are they just going to do AMM (automatic mix mode)?

avid and microsoft should just get it over with and merge.

another great thing avid has done with their massively expensive video editing rigs (at least a year ago, might be different now) is not allow them to take PT session files.

come on people, you own digidesign, you have full rights to the software.  i used to pull my hair out transfering session across Avidnet and using the OMF tool.  what a nightmare!!!

digitranslator is only slightly better, and it came around right as i was getting out.