issue with plugin delay on a Parallel channel

[Recuero]

So, I've been having this issue and I can't figure out how to fix this, let me explain:

I was writing a song, just recorded some guitars through some amp sims, wonderful. So I want to add drums, EZdrummer 3, simple enough. I write the midi and I get sound. 

Now, I want the drums to sound a bit processed but I'm focused on writing, so I put on some Parallel compression on the drums, fast and effective. And here's where the issue comes in. 

The raw channel and the parallel channel are not in sync and sounds out of phase when I add the plugin. 

Now you might say it's the plugin changing phase, but no, since that delay happens even if the plugin is bypassed and with any plugin.

So it might be how I set the Parallel channel, but no, since without adding the plugin, pressing the phase flip on the channel get a perfect null. 

I've tried different ways to get a Parallel channel. Creating a send from the Raw track to an Aux track and using this Aux track as the Parallel, still the same result.

In the Raw track, instead of having it output to master, I output to a Patch Point, and then adding 2 tracks with the patch point as the inputs, and one track as raw and the other as Parallel, still the same result. 

But the funny thing is, if I start the playback, and while it's playing I switch the Parallel channels Interleave to mono and back to stereo, the delay is gone and it's in sync... and when I stop the playback, and start again, it's out of sync again. 

There's clearly some delay compensation that's not happening or something like that. 

For the time being I have a way to get around this, but I figured this should no happen. The way I get around this is adding the compressor to the Raw channel also but having it bypassed. 

So yeah, just putting this issue out there, thanks for reading!

[David Baay]

What plugin and what drum synth? The FX section in Addictive drums adds 64 samples of PDC that I once reported was not being compensated properly when doing parallel compression. I don't recall if this was ever fixed. Workaround was disable Addictive FX, and use 3rd-party plugins on its output tracks.

Other than that, assuming PDC Override is not enabled. It sounds like the plugin is not reporting its PDC, but that would not explain how changing interleave fixes it - that's just weird. Can you repro with a different compressor plugin or drum synth?

Edited September 17, 2022 by David Baay

[Recuero]

18 hours ago, David Baay said:

What plugin and what drum synth? The FX section in Addictive drums adds 64 samples of PDC that I once reported was not being compensated properly when doing parallel compression. I don't recall if this was ever fixed. Workaround was disable Addictive FX, and use 3rd-party plugins on its output tracks.

Other than that, assuming PDC Override is not enabled. It sounds like the plugin is not reporting its PDC, but that would not explain how changing interleave fixes it - that's just weird. Can you repro with a different compressor plugin or drum synth?

Well, I've been testing it further and some funny things began happening.

First I tried plugins not just from waves, I tried from a bunch of 3rd parties and also the built in ones. All of them caused the same desync, and not just compressor, EQs, Reverbs, you name it. Bypassed or not it was still causing the issue. 

So to dig deeper, I tried freezing the drums, since in audio tracks this issue was not present. Freezing the drums made the issue go away, but since I'm writing I can't be freezing every single time and unfreezing.. 

It seems it's with the instrument track and playing the midi I wrote. Since I use EZDrummer 3 as the drum synth, it's got a built in midi player. I thought maybe I'd get a different result but no, still no sync. 

So it was time to test a different drum synth. And here's where the funny stuff comes in.

I loaded Kontakt Player and put the Mixwave Mario Duplantier drum synth. I route the synths output to the same Patch Point that I used to do the Parallel compression and guess what, it's in sync. Nice! So it must be EZDrummer 3 right? So I play EZDrummer again and it's in sync... Now that's funny. 

So I reloaded the project where the Kontakt drums were not added yet. EZDrummer was desyncd. As soon as I add a instrument track with Kontak Player in it, EZDrummer is back in sync. That's.. weird to say the least. 

I'm lost at this point.

[David Baay]

4 hours ago, Recuero said:

I'm lost at this point.

Yeah. me too!  This is the kind if issue that could benefit from having eyes and hands on;  if you could share a stripped down version of the project that demonstrates the problem I could check it out. I don't have EZDrummer or the  Mixwave synth but have a lot of other drum synths. Kontakt and many compressors.

Otherwise I cannot reproduce a phase error sending to a bus or aux track with a PDC-inducing plugin on it.

[Glenn Stanton]

21 hours ago, David Baay said:

Otherwise I cannot reproduce a phase error sending to a bus or aux track with a PDC-inducing plugin on it.

OP - is it possible that you turned off the PDC during tracking to eliminate latency, and now any un-even fx timing is showing up?

[Recuero]

16 minutes ago, Glenn Stanton said:

OP - is it possible that you turned off the PDC during tracking to eliminate latency, and now any un-even fx timing is showing up?

I opened an empty project and just started recording guitars and adding drums. The latency I get tracking guitars is not noticeable so I don't have the need to change buffer size or mess with PDC or anything. So PDC was the same since opening the project.

See, the thing is that PDC works on audio. The guitars I recorded don't show any desync if I make a parallel proccess, and the drum track freezed doesn't desync either. It's the instrument track reading the MIDI. And if I click PDC on and off I can hear it change, but it's still has phase issues. And the fact that during playback, changing the Parallel interleave to mono and back to stereo solves it, and when I stop and start the playback again makes it desync is puzzling me.

One last thing I've tried as well, to make a Parallel track in a different way. I can create and Aux track and have the input set directly from an EZDrummer output (in this case outputs 1&2, the same as the Raw track) not a a send, just listening to the output directly. And still desyncd. 

 

 

[bitflipper]

Try this: mute and archive everything except the parallel drum tracks. Archiving - not just muting - is necessary to take any delay compensation for them out of the equation.  Are the two drum tracks still out of sync with one another?

There is a clue, I think, in the observation that the problem goes away when you freeze the drums. I do not think this is a PDC problem.

[Recuero]

Archiveing everything but the drums get the same result, still out of phase. 

 

[Recuero]

22 hours ago, David Baay said:

Yeah. me too!  This is the kind if issue that could benefit from having eyes and hands on;  if you could share a stripped down version of the project that demonstrates the problem I could check it out. I don't have EZDrummer or the  Mixwave synth but have a lot of other drum synths. Kontakt and many compressors.

Otherwise I cannot reproduce a phase error sending to a bus or aux track with a PDC-inducing plugin on it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ghti85j3lqawo9a/TEST.rar?dl=0

This one I made that has the issue. It's got the Sonitus Compressor on the Parallel and still it's out of phase. 

Now, I don't know if you could be able to replicate it without EZDrummer 3, since adding Kontakt aswell made the issue go away even after deleting the Kontakt track. 

If you cannot replicate it then I might have to make a video or something to show whats going on. 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Recuero
spelling errors

[Glenn Stanton]

its definitely something going on... i got the out of phase issue on the drums (i replaced the ez drums with addictive drums).

1. created a blank project.
2. set up SI-drums (everyone has those ? ) on an DRUMS audio track and MIDI (clips from project file) track.
3. create new patch point. 
4. assigned output of DRUMS to Patch Point 1
5. created new audio tracks - PDRUM with Sonitus Compressor in FX bucket, and RAW.
6. assigned Patch Point 1 to both PDRUM and RAW.
7. created Bus A.
8. assigned output of PDRUM and RAW tracks to Bus A.

started PLAY. no phasing. turn off FX on PDRUM, ok. turn on FX on PDRUM - phasing. turn off - still phasing. STOPPED PLAY. restart PLAY - no phasing.

with the Sonitus Compressor turned off, cycling the FX bucket causes the same phasing. removing the Sonitus Compress - cycling is ok, no phasing.

added Wave C1 compressor - no problem.

going to suggest the Sonitus Compressor is the issue. if you remove it from the original project - same thing happens - no phasing.

TEST (DRMS W PATCH POINT PHASE).cwp

Edited September 19, 2022 by Glenn Stanton

[Will.]

Weird indeed. Heres something even stranger. Everytime i opened the project, I would get a two second feedback of the drums which sounds like a delay. On play there was definitely an issue and as you've mentioned, toggling the interleave removed that, but also "bleeds" slightly into stereo - barely noticeble, but its there. 

Strange thing: I've replaced EZD3 with my AD3 and now I cant reproduce the problem anymore. I haven't done anything else, besides toggling the interleave back and forth and replacing EZD3 with my AD3 and back to EZD3. 

Edited September 21, 2022 by Will.

[David Baay]

On 9/19/2022 at 2:32 PM, Glenn Stanton said:

started PLAY. no phasing. turn off FX on PDRUM, ok. turn on FX on PDRUM - phasing. turn off - still phasing. STOPPED PLAY. restart PLAY - no phasing.

Once upon a time it was always necessary to restart the transport when toggling a PDC-inducing plugin on or off - either way - to reset the PDC amount .  I don't recall when that changed , but automatic PDC re-sync does seem to be working for VST plugins. I haven't looked at your project but just did a quick test of my own with the Sonitus Compressor (64 samples of delay) and found the signals consistently going out of phase when the enable/disable state is changed during playback but getting back in phase when I switch back as expected. If it didn't go out of phase the first time you switched it off and back in phase when you switched it back on, that would be unusual. I can't repro that in my project. In any case,  it seems likely this is only an issue with DX plugins.

Edited September 21, 2022 by David Baay

[David Baay]

On 9/19/2022 at 12:09 PM, Recuero said:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ghti85j3lqawo9a/TEST.rar?dl=0

This one I made that has the issue. It's got the Sonitus Compressor on the Parallel and still it's out of phase. 

I can only reproduce an issue when switching either the FX Bin or the plugin itself off and on, and there are a few twists. In Summary:

- It seems CW solved the problem of needing to restart the transport to re-sync by forcing a momentary restart when you toggle FX bins off and on. You can see and hear the transport doing this.

- The restart happens both ways with a VST plugins (e.g. Transient Shaper)  but only when going from On to Off with a DX plugins. This explains what Glenn saw. With Sonitus Compressor you have to do  a manual restart when taking the FX bin from Off to On. My guess is Sonitus EQ will behave the same way.

- In my testing, I was initially toggling the FX itself rather than the bin which doesn't force a restart either way (no transport hiccup) but maintains sync consistently both ways with VST plugins, and fails consistently both ways with Sonitus Compressor.

 

Edited September 21, 2022 by David Baay