Plugin Delay on Kick & Snare

[Davydh]

Hi,

I'm currenting running Cakewalk on a Laptop that isn't powerful enough,
and I plan on buying a powerful PC in a couple of months,
but right now I'm trying to do parallel compassion on the Kick & Snare,
and there's very noticable delay between the source audio and parallel return.

I rendered/exported it as a wave outside of Cakewalk and there was no delay,
but while playing within Cakewalk it's really bad.

I want to know will this go away with a fast computer?
I'm going from Addictive Drums into the master buss
and also into a Kick/Snare crush with a lo-fi & dbx160.

Just curious about other people's experience with delay on plugins and ways of dealing with it.

Thanks!

[Starship Krupa]

In my experience it's been more a matter of the plug-in than the computer.

These days, most compressor plug-ins have provision for doing parallel compression built in via a "dry/wet" knob or something similar. There would be no delay because the processing would be handled by a single plug-in. I am curious about your signal flow. I'm not 100% what "a Kick/Snare crush with a lo-fi & dbx160" is. Probably a destroyed sound using a dbx-type VCA modeled compressor and a bit crusher? You should be running them comp>lo-fi rather than the other way.

Here is one possible way to set up Addictive Drums (or any drum machine with multiple outs) up for parallel compression, plus what I assume is a bit crusher.

Create a bus. Name it "Kick Snare." Create another bus. Name it "Drums."

Route the kick and snare from AD to "Kick Snare." Route "Kick Snare" and the rest of the AD outs to "Drums."

Put your compressor of choice in "Kick Snare's" FX rack. Mine might be the Signal Noise SN01-G VCA Compressor*, which has a "dry-wet" knob. Then put the lo-fi in the rack after it, because it's easier to get a slamming drum sound and then destroy it rather than the other way around.

Set the compressor up the way the YouTube parallel compression video guy said to. Set up the crusher until it sounds appropriately sikk. Set the fader on "Kick Snare" so that it blends in with the rest of the drum kit.

The idea here is that I'm using the plug-ins' own Dry/Wet controls for my parallel processing rather than doing it the hard way, which is not only harder, it can result in things like missing playback delay compensation, which it sounds like you've been experiencing.

I like to compress my kick and snare independently of each other, so they might each get their own bus, then another with the bit crusher, but that's me. YMMV.

*for really slamming drums, there's nothing like Audio Damage's Rough Rider, which is free and just came out with version 3

[CJ Jacobson]

6 hours ago, Davydh said:

I want to know will this go away with a fast computer?

I never heard any delays form doing parallel compression or any other kind of effect processing while mixing. So i am sure its your PC and may be even your sound card settings or lack of having a dedicated sound card with good drivers written for DAW's

[John Vere]

What are your computer specs? I can run CbB on a old Sony laptop made in 2008. I do have a SSD drive and a whopping 4 GB of RAM. The processor is 1 core 2.4. 

It has no problems handling 24 tracks of audio with standard effects and a few VST' instruments. A little slow in the graphics that's all. 

But I think CJ has your answer-- are you using a proper ASIO audio interface? 

[Davydh]

Thank you all for responding and sorry for the delayed response.

I've since found out that by sending my dry signal to a bus before the master bus stops there being a delay.

I'm only using a creative labs usb at the moment, but I intend to buy the UAD Twin Apollo USB very soon with a new system.