How does Cakewalk time align auxes

[norfolkmastering]

If I have a track and I send that track to a bus and also to an aux; then I also route the aux master to the same bus, does Cakewalk have to do some timing work so that the two paths;

track to bus

and

track to aux to bus

are time aligned?

 

[David Baay]

Only if one path is subject to the delay of a PDC-inducing plugin that the other one isn't, andCW does handle that case correctly in my experience. Aux tracks themselves do not introduce any extra delay.

Are you seeing/hearing a problem? If so, what's the setup?

[norfolkmastering]

No problem when I’m mixing totally within Cakewalk. However I also mix in analogue using feeds from Cakewalk which are fed to my analogue mixer via the new external insert send only feature.  This is when I think I found a timing issue.

So consider this example:

Some ‘external’ feeds are derived directly from Cakewalk tracks.  These always time align in the analogue domain.

Then I add some ‘external’ feeds to my analogue mixer which are derived from Cakewalk aux masters.

Why aux masters?  I use auxes to collect together my 12 Session Drummer sources into five ‘microphones’. So each of the 12 drum sources is sent to each of the five ‘microphones’ (i.e. an aux bus) at different feed levels.

So I am simulating mic’ing a real drum kit with five microphones. It works really well.

It is the external insert sends of these aux masters which don’t seem to be quite timing tight with the track feeds.

And that’s why I wondered if the two paths had different timing path lengths within Cakewalk.

I’ll do some more tests in case there is another cause.

 

[David Baay]

54 minutes ago, norfolkmastering said:

It is the external insert sends of these aux masters which don’t seem to be quite timing tight with the track feeds.

External Insert has an automatic delay compensationn mechanism. It needs to be set by clicking the button under 'Delay' after assigning the send/return channels. Sonar measures the actual round-trip delay by sending out a transient and measuring how long it takes to return and usually does not need an additional manual offset. When the external device is analog, this delay is just the RTL of your interface's A/D/A converison plus an ASIO buffer each way. It should not matter whether the EI is on a track, an aux or a bus so long as its delay compensation is correct.

I should add that this delay compensation works the same as PDC for plugins with lookahead buffers; the tracks that aren't going through the external insert have to be delayed by the calculated amount to sync up with the delayed return signal of the tracks that do.

Edited February 5 by David Baay

[norfolkmastering]

The Cakewalk external insert sends are not returned back into Cakewalk so the auto delay compensation mechanism is not used.

The sends go to my external analogue mixer when I decide to do the final mix down in analogue.

That’s why I wondered if the extra path length via auxes was causing the timing problem.

[Glenn Stanton]

you probably need to spend some time manually entering any delay compensation needed - find whichever source (mix or drums) is the longest and align the others to that. the physical connections (and presuming the mixer doesn't have some LCR networks causing weirdness) should have more than microseconds of delays (analog).

[norfolkmastering]

I’ll experiment with a click on each track and measure the different timings that way. Should be easy enough to figure out which tracks need delays to match timings. Hopefully it will be consistent.

[David Baay]

5 hours ago, norfolkmastering said:

The sends go to my external analogue mixer when I decide to do the final mix down in analogue.

If the sends aren't being returned, you don't need to use an External Insert. You can just remove the EI and send form the Aux directly to the ouputs that you had assigned to the EI.  And there's nothing to be compensated because all tracks/auxes/buses are subject to the same outbound ASIO latency of the interface and nothing else, unless ther are plugins that require delay compensation. If there's still a sync error, it's likely related to some PDC issue. Are you using any plugins in the project that you know require compensation?

If you can share the project, I'd be interested in checking out the routing and sync on my system.

[norfolkmastering]

I use the External Insert sends because they sit within FX presets each of which contains one other FX which is used for a couple of other important purposes, one of which is to give each track a unique identity.

As example I can assign an FX preset named ‘R8-3’ to a track. This preset contains an ID tag which tells my external controller to route that Cakewalk track to a specific analogue port within my analogue recording and mixdown system.

I previously used Cakewalk track and aux output routing (as you describe) but it did not allow the level of integration which FX based routing via External Insert Sends allows.

When I do the final mixdown ‘out of the box’ Cakewalk controls all the routing, gain, pans and faders in my analogue mixer and also remote control of my analogue tape machines should I be using them in a project.

So it’s possible that some of the other FXs I use are causing the issue. When I’m back from travelling I’ll share a project if you would be willing to spend the time checking timing.

[David Baay]

Thanks for the explanation. I'd still be interested in checking it out.

[norfolkmastering]

That’s great. I’m on the road for a week so I’ll post again when I get back and organise a test project.

[norfolkmastering]

I think I found the culprit which was causing the timing issue.  I had a reverb plug-in on a track feeding one of the auxes.  The feed track was hidden and I didn't spot it.

All good now.  I'm getting perfect timing on all insert send feeds to my analogue mixer and machines.