sent all my drum tracks to a drum bus, and while trying to lay over some parallel compression to my drum bus, some delay popped up. the parallel compressed track comes in after the drums track. how do i cut the delay out so its clean and not laggy with parallel compression? im using Live.

thanks guys

 

There's a video about it in AudioSex Academy (Part I) along with other useful information. You should check it out.

 

Some compressors have an internal latency in order to look ahead the signal... maybe you have not activated the latency compensation of your Daw, but if I'm not wrong you can perform parallel compression in live 9 with the beautiful glue compressor without doubling the bus!

 

Automatic PDC (Plugin Delay Compensation) is not great in its flawed implementation. Still I personally love Live to much for it to get in the way.
Catalyst thanks for the information, I'll give it a look just in case I have missed anything as even though I've been on Live since v4, One can never not learn new things or alternative methods. It would be the only thing I would be made up with if the Abe's finally address auto PDC in say v9.5 or v10...Time will tell on that one.

royacolours hope you find a workaround which is as simple and painless to implement into your own workflow as possible

 

Each channel in Live has a dedicated Track Delay for situations like this. Use this to compensate for the delay.

Pressed the "D" shown in the image below to show the Track Delay sections, then adjust the desired track(s).

 

ahhh by grouping the tracks! thanks for sending me to that post, lots of useful info on there. just for curiosity, do you happen to know why there is a latency going on? (in Live 9) i routed all my drum tracks to a bus and sending parallel compression thru an aux return track and then that aux track is sent to my drum bus to control the whole drum kit. if i change the aux's output back to the master, some of the latency is removed by a good margin but how i would be able to control all of my drums (including the parallel bus) if that latency issue comes up? is grouping my only way out?

i have Live's comprerssor in my parallel compression send with the look ahead to 10ms. where do i activate it on the actual DAW? you can parallel compress that way too but i would like to perfect the routing way

is there a shortcut to figure out how many ms you need? or do you just do it by ear?
i feel like i hear some phase going on when i add ms

 

Of course this will give you phasing problems.

Which compressor are you using? You have to find out how much delay the plugin creates.

I don't use live but I know the Glue compressor. I would suggest to use that on a track and use the dry/wet knob.

Isn't there a way to enable ADC (automatic delay compensation) in live? I never had this issue in reaper.

 

There's no shortcut unfortunately. Adjust till it sits right.

Other options:

You can VISUALIZE phasing using tools such as Izotope Ozone 5 Imager, IK T-Racks, PSP StereoPack(the Analyzer), Waves PAZ Analyzer,... there are so many.

You could also bounce the compressed and uncompressed waveforms, visually inspect them, nudge/shift the compressed to fit. (I think this should be easier and more precise)

Live has had plugin delay compensation issues for years, people have complained, but I guess it's just never been fixed. If you search Google for 'live pdc' you'll find threads and some ways of getting around it. If I find any those threads I seen before, I link them. Hope this helps.

 

PDC is standard in today's DAWs. I don't see why Ableton can't fix this rather simple problem (as all plugins that have latency have the latency in ms and/or sample offset written in the info/code by the coder/plugin company).

Back in the old days you just loaded the same plugin on another send, but set it to dry/bypass/zero. That way you had everything (send1 and send2) in total phase. This works even today (if you are unlucky to use Ableton Live, that is)

 

+ PDC works absolutely fine in Logic Pro. No need to guess milliseconds or anything with that, any old 3rd party compressor will be adjusted automagically.

 

2 quick suggestions:

--Use a compressor with W/D setting like Glue - send 100% of the signal to it

--Group 2 identical compressors in a Rack
(or whatever those things are called when you have two things going at once)
--set one to nothing (for dry with identical delay)
--one to compression (for wet with identical delay)
--volume of each will regulate the Wet and Dry signal with no delay

Live PDC is a bitch

 

with this methode there are phase issues, be aware . ;-)

 

great explanation/warning??

---

Where is the delay and phase introduced?



If there are 2 identical compressors on the rack
using lives compressor (with no look ahead)

Both signals for the Compression wet chain and compression dry chain are identical.

 

The best way i've found is this:

When I mix with Live I use busses.
So lets say, just for drums now ( of course that would be applied in any other cases/instruments family, DAW)

K- Sn - HH- Toms - OHL - OHR - ROOM>>>> all grouped in Drms Grp
each output of K,Sn etc… are automatically routed to "group" so the Drms Grp output needs now to be routed to an
audio track called DRUM BUS which have his input on monitor IN.
This DRUM BUS output goes to SUM which is another audio track created to be a PRE MASTER before your MASTER.
Then you can leave the MASTER without any process, just a plugin to check levels, phase etc … So on your SUM you can applied any fx desired .

Create your return tracks, let say 4:
A - parallel com >>> routed to ALL FX ( via activate D slot on each 3 return track)
B - reverb >>> routed to ALL FX ( via activate D slot on each 3 return track)
C - delay >>> routed to ALL FX ( via activate D slot on each 3 return track)
D - ALL FX

I'm glad with this configuration, it gives loads of possibilities to sculpt, check, process each individual sound and group.It gives more efficient ways for parallel process, 'cause you can play with the
ALL FX fader to check WETsignal with DRY signal from SUM all goes finally to MASTER BUS

Here is the template ( Live 9.1)




Cheers

 

This is become tricky when you are working with a multitrack drums. 'cause if you are trying to process just few elements, phase issue appeared thanx to delay not perfectly compensate in Live.
But on just a drm loop stereo it works well of course.

 

I am basically a bit lazy. I spent a while reading up on this and came up with the Lazy Man solution: bounce your drums down to a stereo audio track and stick a compressor on it, maybe 3:1ratio. Chris Lord Alge it aint, but it sounds punchy...

 

Delay Compensation is easily disabled by Options --> Uncheck Delay Compensation... if thats the actual problem, that is...

 

royacolours
No problem man, glad you found it useful. It was a project I started a while back and I'm looking to expand it in the future.

Live has horrible PDC issues, that may be part of the problem right there. I don't use it personally but I've recently had to give it another look because I'm in need of switching DAWs since I'm on Windows 8 64 and Cubase 5 won't work on that platform. Some people swear by it but I really have a hard time getting into it because of issues with PDC, the mixing, etc. I think the other members answered your question in depth already concerning routing so you're all set. davea's answer was particularly useful and concise.

 

sweet man thanks for the template!
one question... what are the advantages to sending all your FX channels to 1 main FX aux send?

THANKS EVERYONE FOR THEIR INPUT! appreciate you all

 

My pleasure man. Hope it can help to understand this kind of workflow.

About the main FX channel, well, take it as "FX MASTER"or "MASTER GRP" if you want. Then you can process this ALL FX track aswell to make it as stereo (wider ? not really ?) or mono track for example, which would give an extra deph in your mix … Or check with EQ, comp, for extra better balance in frequencies/dynamics. Or add spacial fx as revrb, dlay, chorus or else. Possibilities are endless of course.
Finally this can be applied in any GRP, BUSSES. With this technique, you keep your initial track almost ;-) original ( just EQing there or there, a bit of comp there or there). You have better control of what you want with more possibilities.

But to go deeper about routing you can aswell route your ALL FX to SUM, there will be delay prob with all dynamics process plugins,
aswell with some spectral fx ( Rvrb, dlay …) but less easy to hear/catch, but sometimes it gives cool results too ;-)
So let's say in your SUM track you have a COMP+LIM. And in your ALL FX goes like this:
A - PARALLEL COMP
B - RVRB
C- DLAY
D - ALL FX

You mute all B&C and keep A working. So routed to your SUM track which have aswell COMP & LIM. You can hear metalize sound with less power.This is the result of delay prob which gives phase issue too. Why doing this such routing ?
Because if you want let say your RVRB squach by the COMP +LIM in SUM track, giving a nice pump or just organic reverb sound moving with the rest of the tracks routed in SUM ( DRUM BUS, BASS BUS, PERC BUS, SYNTH BUS, VOICE BUS ect…), to glue everything with adding "colors . This is one of the reasons of this kind of routing of course.
Delay compensation need to be well done. Usely built in plugins are well done for that but not all. 3rd party plugins same story.
So if it's too complicate. As had mentioned mileslong, you can bounce the track which gives prob and deal with it in a new track on your mix and place it correctly to avoid any any phase prob.