Hello.
When I play my keyboards with e.g. keyscape, I sometimes like to have 1 or 2 extra fx plugins activated. Though that creates a sometimes heavy delay because of latency. Is there any way to prevent this and keep the fx applied?
I know It’s possible to compensate with low latency, but that disables the fx all together - that’s now what I want.
Best, Simon
Hi and welcome to the forum,
No, there is no way. This is how DAWs work. If they need an extra time to process a plug-in, you get a delay, if you are in the live input mode.
You can ask the developer of the plugin, that introduces the latency, if they can make their plugin with a lower latency. (Probably their answer will be: sorry, no)
Alternatively you can work with a higher sample rate like 96kHz - if your computer can manage the higher workload, that this implies.
The way around the problem of latency is to reduce the buffer size on the control panel of your audio interface. Lower values will reduce the latency, but if your computer isn’t powerful enough then you’ll get pops and clicks. It’s a bit of trial and error to see what you computer can achieve Vs acceptable latency.
I have a Focusrite 8i6 and 128 samples on 48Khz gives me virtually zero latency, but on other audio interfaces I’ve used I needed to go as low as 32 or 64 samples. Hard to say, depending on your interface and processor/memory capability.
You might find this article useful:
You need a time machine for that. It’s on top of the feature request.
Besides, when you insert a plugin while playing back audio, some cause an audible gap/glitch, and some do not. You may have noticed it already?
The ones that do not cause the noise are the ones without buffering. They are safe to use.
Buffer induced latency is static. OP mentions a changed latency, which must be created by plugins.
Reducing the samples would help ease the problem though?
What would be useful would be an option of excluding certain plugins from the Constrain Latency Compensation facility. For example I maybe want to do an overdub on a guitar part using NI Guitar Rig when I have a lot of instances of Neutron on the various other tracks. CLC shuts down the high latency plugins like Neutron, but including Guitar Rig.
Unless of course forumistas can tell me that this is something that already exists and I’ve missed it? 
No, because the buffer size is applied when Cubase sends the audio signal to the ASIO driver (or when the ASIO driver sends data to Cubase). The latency of plugins happen inside of Cubase. It is totally independent from the buffer size setting.
Maybe this setting?
Preferences → VST
Plugins with latency value below the threshold will remain active during recording. All others will be deactivated.
That sounds interesting …thanks for that. I’ll investigate.
As for the latency issue I’ll bow to superior knowledge on that one 