Issue with PDC

[Max_B10]

Hello hello,

recently I discovered a weird series of issues regarding Plugin Delay. The issue appears on my Bass Channel. It's a soft synth creating a reeze bass. The signal flows through the usual mixer channel, passing 6 FX plugins. Then it flows into my Bass Aux Channel, where the signal is processed further. I have shaperbox loaded as my third plugin in the aux mixer track. It has a 1/4 beat ducking curve. So it should pump to the beat, lowering it's volume everytime my kick hits. The problem is, since the plugin is on that aux channel, the rhythm is delayed which means the bass is loud when the kick is present and vice versa. Now the interesting part is, when I put Shaperbox to the first position of the Aux Track Chain, the problem is the same. However when I put the plugin on the original Bass Track, everything is fine. So it seems like the routing causes a delay, which never happened to me before eventhough I had that same setup a lot of times. What is even more confusing to me is the fact that when I render that Bass Track, it renders the wrong rhythm, so it's not just a playback issue. 

I Talked to the suppport guy from Cableguys and he said the following: 

"Thank you for your mail. Cableguys effects work fine in Logic when they
are the only plugin on a track. But they can introduce latency in other
cases — this can (but does not always) happen when there are several
plugins on the track, or when used on a group or on an audio track with
other tracks routed to it. This is not a problem with Cableguys plugins,
but a PDC (Plugin Delay Compensation) issue within Logic. Our plugins
are synced to the timing information that is provided by Logic, but
sadly Logic doesn't take PDC into account correctly here and thus the
timing information provided can be wrong.

We've talked about this with Apple, and we encourage anyone to bug them
about this issue."

So is there REALLY no workaround at all? I tried all Buffer Sizes. And it only started happening with my last 2 projects, never before...

Also in this screenshot you can see in the oscilloscope how the kick doesn't hit on the 1 - how it should...

[Maestro777]

3 hours ago, Max_B10 said:

We've talked about this with Apple, and we encourage anyone to bug them
about this issue."

Your post and concern would likely be more appropriate here since you've already established the fact that it is a bug and this area of the forums would be of no real benefit in terms of a resolution.

[digichild]

Put Shaperbox in the channel instead of the bus. Does it help?

[Max_B10]

20 hours ago, Maestro777 said:

Your post and concern would likely be more appropriate here since you've already established the fact that it is a bug and this area of the forums would be of no real benefit in terms of a resolution.

Yeah true I thought maybe there are some settings I missed or some workarounds to this inside of Logic...but I guess there aren't..

[Max_B10]

18 hours ago, digichild said:

Put Shaperbox in the channel instead of the bus. Does it help?

Yes that does work but I want it to be after my compression/distortion plugins and also it's a workflow thing to me. I just can't comprehend why a company like Apple are not able to correctly report the delays when just routing to a bus. 

[digichild]

I understand. For me the only solution is to have my shaper boxes in the channels. It is pretty easy to copy and paste settings (if it is just 2-3 channels)

[sunbrother]

13 hours ago, Max_B10 said:

Yes that does work but I want it to be after my compression/distortion plugins and also it's a workflow thing to me. I just can't comprehend why a company like Apple are not able to correctly report the delays when just routing to a bus. 

They probably designed their audio engine without side chains in mind the first time and now need to allocate the time to fix it. I mentioned it in the other thread but another very popular DAW did the same thing (we can either compensate tracks or buses, choose one) and claimed it would take ~1 year to fix it with their roadmap etc etc and then it became a huge bugaboo for enough people and they fixed it in 3 months. The fringe benefit of not being a company that does live streams and one on one support is that you don’t have to deal with your annoyed customers. 

Edited August 11, 2023 by sunbrother

[zplane]

Was plugin delay compensation set to "all" when you tried the plugin in the Aux channel where the timing was off ?

[zplane]

There are quite a few postings about shaperbox and like plugins that need to sync to the time/rhythm having their timing be off in various DAWs including Logic, Bitwig FL Studio over the years going back to shaperbox 2 (when placed after plugins inducing "significant" latency).   Not clear to me why such a chain of plugins would work differently on an aux instead of an audio channel if PDC is set to all.  The link below suggests a workaround in Logic is to use an instrument track to control the timing of shaperbox via MIDI.  I assume that means trigger shaperbox via the MIDI sidechain.

My understanding is Logic reads plugin latency as reported from plugins when playback starts.  If however, a plugin subsequently changes settings thru automation or other time dependent controls that *change*the*latency* during playback, then even though the AU framework allows latency changes to be reported to Logic - Logic may ignore those reports.  I can't verify that is still the case as I am not up to date on those dev postings.  But that could explain why the timing of time sensitive plugins goes awry when placed after other (dynamic) plugins inducing latency.

 

[Max_B10]

On 8/11/2023 at 11:24 PM, sunbrother said:

They probably designed their audio engine without side chains in mind the first time and now need to allocate the time to fix it. I mentioned it in the other thread but another very popular DAW did the same thing (we can either compensate tracks or buses, choose one) and claimed it would take ~1 year to fix it with their roadmap etc etc and then it became a huge bugaboo for enough people and they fixed it in 3 months. The fringe benefit of not being a company that does live streams and one on one support is that you don’t have to deal with your annoyed customers. 

Yeah all that PDC seems to be pretty hard to solve. Had FL Studio before and had similar issues there...bit frustrating but that's how it is.

[Max_B10]

On 8/12/2023 at 5:31 AM, zplane said:

The link below suggests a workaround in Logic is to use an instrument track to control the timing of shaperbox via MIDI.  I assume that means trigger shaperbox via the MIDI sidechain.

Yes thank you I tried that method and it works. But it's a pain to setup and kills the flow...Also you can manually shift the timing inside of ShaperBox. But I'd rather have the PDC fixed at it's source.

 

 

On 8/12/2023 at 5:31 AM, zplane said:

My understanding is Logic reads plugin latency as reported from plugins when playback starts.  If however, a plugin subsequently changes settings thru automation or other time dependent controls that *change*the*latency* during playback, then even though the AU framework allows latency changes to be reported to Logic - Logic may ignore those reports.  I can't verify that is still the case as I am not up to date on those dev postings.  But that could explain why the timing of time sensitive plugins goes awry when placed after other (dynamic) plugins inducing latency.

Sounds legit, but what I don't understand is that when I put Shaperbox on the last slot of my original channel, it works fine. However when I put it in the first slot of the AUX it reports wrong delays. There's no plugin in between, just the routing...

[Max_B10]

On 8/12/2023 at 4:15 AM, zplane said:

Was plugin delay compensation set to "all" when you tried the plugin in the Aux channel where the timing was off ?

Oh and yes it was, tried a lot of different settings with no success..