Advice for Cubase 6-UAD1 delay issues please

Cubase
1

Hi -

I’m afraid I’ve got myself all confused with how I’m supposed to delay tracks when I’m using UAD-1 on the other tracks. Some of my UAD-processed tracks went out of sync last night, and I wound up manually sliding the tracks around to compensate… :frowning: as I’d spent hours getting the dry harmony voices lined up, then they went out of sync with each other because of different UAD-1 processing.

I don’t know if this is important, but here’s the chain of what is routed (“>>”) to what:

Lead Vox track w/ UAD-1 inserts (Cambridge, Fairchild, Plate 140) >>Lead Vox Group>>Combined Vox Group >> 2-bus . Even though this track had UAD’s inserted in it, it never went out of sync with the backing tracks/rest of the project.

Harmony #1 track >> Harmony Group with UAD-1 inserts >> Routed to the same "Combined Vox Group as the Lead Vox. This track went out of sync as soon as I activated the UAD-1 plug-in.

Harmony #2 track>> Routed to the same Harmony Group as the Harmony 1 track, then routed in parallel with the Harmony 1 track on to the “Combined Vox” group and on to the 2-bus. In other words, the two harmony voices get their UAD processing after being combined into a “Harmony Group”. This track also went out of sync as soon as I activated the UAD-1 plug-in. Also, it was by a different amount than the Harmony #1 track was out of sync, which I cannot understand at all since they were processed in the same group…

These vox tracks play against a backing track of piano currently.

First off, is “Adjust for Record Latency” in Device>Device Setup>VST Audio System>Advanced what the UAD-1 literature is referring to as “Plug In Delay Compensation”? I don’t monitor through plug-ins - so should I have the box always checked for “Adjust for Record Latency”?

2nd: I did not have “Restrain Delay Comp” turned on in the project page, but as soon as I activated the UAD-1s the harmony tracks went out of sync with the lead vox (having been perfectly in sync on the dry tracks). What surprised me is that they were out of sync whether or not the “Adjust for Record Latency” box was checked.

Finally, I did not make any adjustments to the “Track Delay” setting for any of the individual tracks.

Can anyone see any reason why in the above situation my Harmony voices (which weren’t processed by UAD-1 until they were routed to a group) would go out of sync with the rest of the project, but the Lead voice (which was processed by UAD directly via an insert) did not?

(Note - I did not use the UAD “DelayComp” plug-in, even though the UAD literature said it would be necessary “whenever unprocessed audio is being played alongside audio tracks assigned to a send/group/bus using a UAD plug-in”. A little earlier in the UAD manual it pointed out that Cubase has automatic “full plug in delay compensation”, and so the UAD “DelayComp” plug-in should not be used.)

Is there another control that I should be looking at as well?

Any help would much appreciated, thanks!

2

Always have Adjust for record latency checked.

Cubase has full automatic plugin delay compensation. The UAD manual is referring to hosts that didn’t like earlier versions of Pro-Tools le.

If tracks start to go out of sync when inserting plugins then something has gone wrong. Quickly save a new version of the project Ctrl/Alt S… shut cubase down then reload. It should be fine again. Don’t go sliding tracks around trying to compensate, it’ll just end up a mess :frowning:

Oh… and have a look at how Constrain delay compensation works, It has rules as to which plugins get disabled that can lead to the situation you describe when switched on (disabled)

3

Thanks, Split, I’ll do all that on the next song. It went wrong reproducibly a few times last night, but I’m willing to consider that project haunted and just move on! :smiley:

4

To the OP, for what its worth, I can say that I have the same issue.
On Cubase 6 now. Had the same issue back on Cubase 4.5
I have found that Cambridge is a particular culprit.
I have not analysed the conditions (eg: if it only happens when the processed audio passes to a group or whatever)
as I just get impatient and reach for Precision EQ or PSP Neon instead.
I actually contacted UA support years ago about this and they pointed me in Steinberg’s direction.

5

You might try rescanning your plug ins in plug in management. It’s possible that a plug was updated, used a different amount of latency, and now is reporting incorrectly.

It would be nice if Steinberg would add some sort of real time pong tester on the top of their plug window, like we have for external integrations. I’ve noticed that my analog hardware slightly changes from song to song, likely due to whatever other PDC it’s doing. Not by much…but, I figure if external box that of COURSE has fixed latency slightly changes…plug ons have to be the same. Yet, they all have and use what’s listed in plug in management as their latency offset. Be nice to be able to “ping” through and override it.

Tip: never EVER slide tracks around because PDC bugs out. I have particular plugs that sometimes just wig out…and it takes deactivating and Reactivating or a new instance to fix it. I would not dream of moving audio around for a bug. You should be able to get them back by highlighting all, right click and “move to origin”–should put them back where they were recorded if you did it by actually MOVING. The better way is to use the track delay in the project window to “move” audio back and forth in time…so it’s not disturbing the absolute resting place.

6

Hmmm, will try rescan and see, thanks.
I also noticed the shifty round trip latency when testing h/ware intergration.