I was trying to make this glitchy sounding track, so I had a Beat Repeat(Stock effect in Live) on the master that I automated. (the project started with PDC on, as it is by default). After adding enough synths and audio tracks, it became obvious that shit was out of sync cause the Beat Repeat, which was automated on while the kick plays, was catching and repeating the tail end of the kick alone, not the transient. This didn't make sense to me cause PDC is supposed to fix this kind of issue by compensating right? Well, apparently not cause when I turn off PDC, it sounds more in time and Beat Repeat catches and repeats the right part of the track. So with this particular project, I have PDC turned off, but my question is, if I start adding more tracks, thereby introducing more delay, with PDC turned off will that mess up the overall timing? Am I doing something wrong instead, cause I don't understand how turning it off seemingly solves my problem? I had this problem in Live 10(where I started the project) and now Live 11 too. Any insight is appreciated, thank you!

 

PDC IN LIVE DOESNT WORK
its been like this for ages and they obviously dont care

but hey, we got an echo plugin

 

Yeah I know in general its pretty broken, but I haven't run into an issue like this before personally, so I don't know what to do! Should I turn on PDC and remove the Beat Repeat(So I can apply it to a rendered version of the track), or forget about PDC and keep working on it? Will the problems keep piling up with PDC turned off? Should I ignore, bounce all the tracks as stems and manually align them and THEN add the beat repeat?! I'm clueless!

 

the only way to avoid the problem is either to commit whatever youve done in the plugin chain up until beat repeat (aka bounce in place)
OR to have a dummy midi clip send the daw tempo to the beat repeat with the sidechain function, if it has one

thats what I usually do whenever I need to apply sidechain

 

Doesn't have a SC function so the first option will have to do, but before I bounce the track, should I bounce with PDC on or off is the question. Thanks for the reply!

 

Never used Live, but it sounds like automation isn't latency compensated properly. I also suspect some routing problems, because it overcompensates, seemingly. This should not happen in any other scenario I can imagine, even with simplistic algorithms like those of Live. The best you can do here, I suppose, is manually adjust automatioh so it catches the exact moments you want. Move it left, in this instance.
On a side note, more tracks don't necessary mean more latency, as long as the routing is adequate and any new signal path doesn't have more latency than the slowest one already present. PDC evens out channels between themselves before they hit busses, and then evens out busses between themselves before they hit submixes/master, so if what you're adding has less latency than what you already have, the overall latency of the project shouldn't change.

 

This makes sense, thank you!

 

I've been wondering about this myself. Sometimes things don't sound right during playback and when I turn off delay compensation tracks sound more correctly timed. Also my input delay is gone when I turn it off... Should I just not use delay compensation?

 

The Echo plugin was removed in Live 11

 

So could it be an issue on my end/setup then? My initial assumption was that I was running into issues only because I was automating an effect on the master track(Something I rarely do, so maybe that's why I haven't noticed this issue before) Is that a possible explanation?

 

If you're using audio tracks as busses (rather than grouping them) and dont deactivate the sends on those "bus" tracks, Live will have a hard time with delay compensation and whatever fx you use will be out of sync, no matter you use DPC or not

 

Ohh that actually makes a lot of sense! I have an audio track that I'm routing to for a global sidechain, I'll look into whether that's the stem of my issues. Thanks for the input!

 

Can you elaborate more about how you solved it? Because I have a hard time figuring this out. From what I understand, "copying" track/group is the same as a return, it introduces latency and has the same problem as a return track. So for example if I put empty audio track on a full mix, want to make it a Reverb "Return" track, I can put a compressor for example on it, select a track/group in a sidechain section, click on headphone icon and slap a reverb on top of it. So technically the problem persists or not? Am I missing something here, and really can't test this right now, but I encountered that same problem a couple times.

Edit: Ah nah, yeah, I just got it, just completely forgot about it. You can send those groups to a "dummy" audio track, put FX (reverb, etc.) on it, group it, insert another channel within that group and mix in wet/dry. From what I remember groups within audio/instrument tracks are properly delay compensated. Still If I'm wrong, please let me know.

 

Last edited: May 17, 2021

How is hardware/external instrument latency compensation in Ableton? I know it is supposed to work correctly...

 

But that was in 2014...