I’ve encountered a perplexing issue with the Supertone Clear plugin when used within a DOP (Dynamic Optimization Processing) chain, and I’m seeking insights from the community.
As illustrated in the attached screenshot, the signal processed by Supertone Clear within DOP appears to be advanced by approximately -245 samples. This is counter-intuitive, as one would typically expect a plugin to introduce latency (positive delay values) rather than advance the signal. If this were a standard delay compensation scenario, we would anticipate positive millisecond values.
This unexpected phase shift significantly degrades the overall phase coherence and sound quality of the source material. Without precise compensation data (my current measurements are approximate), achieving a properly phased signal is proving impossible.
My understanding is that DOP is designed to assist in situations where plugins, like Supertone Clear when inserted on individual tracks, might struggle with accurate phase synchronization, potentially leading to undesirable phase-based chorus effects during mixdown if not meticulously calculated in real-time. However, in this instance, DOP seems to be introducing even more enigmatic behavior.
Has anyone else experienced similar issues with Supertone Clear in a DOP environment, or with other plugins exhibiting negative sample offsets? What strategies or solutions have you found to effectively manage or correct such phase discrepancies? Any guidance on how to ensure proper phase alignment in these complex scenarios would be greatly appreciated.
The problem is that real-time processing isn’t a silver bullet here either. In complex sessions, not every track requires Clear—some use speech resynthesis, others are clean boom tracks that don’t need this specific processing. When these tracks are summed in groups or buses, that same phase offset creates a ‘chorus’ effect.
If I don’t perform a real-time mixdown, the phase coherence is completely lost. I’ve been working with non-real-time export for over 20 years—it’s one of the reasons I originally moved from Pro Tools to Nuendo. Now, because of this issue, I’m forced to render projects in real-time, which is a massive waste of production time. We shouldn’t be forced back into 20-year-old workflows just because a modern plugin can’t report its offset or sync correctly in DOP
I’ve even tried using AI-assisted coding tools to develop a custom VST3 utility for precise offset detection via loopback. However, the measurements I’m getting aren’t consistent—they seem to fluctuate.
I can’t be 100% sure if the offset itself is unstable after Supertone Clear, or if the loopback measurement method is introducing its own inaccuracies. Either way, it highlights how difficult it is to achieve mathematical phase precision manually. My goal was to create a tool that applies the exact same sample-accurate advancement to the clean tracks (like the Boom) to match the processed ones, but without a stable ‘source of truth’ for the offset value, the phase alignment remains unreliable.
I don’t think that’s the best approach. Sound Radix Auto-Align Post doesn’t simply apply a fixed delay—it continuously adapts the time alignment between microphones based on the incoming signal. It can also perform spectral phase correction, not just delay compensation.
I reported this problem to Supertone while back and got this answer:
“We are aware of this issue and are working to improve it in the next update.
However, we cannot guarantee a specific timeline. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”
fyi. I reported this as a bug to Supertone. they now use a new reporting system (zendesk) so I hope this works better than that discord channel of them.
