[James Price[_5_]]

On Saturday, September 2, 2017 at 2:26:17 PM UTC-5, Scott Dorsey wrote:
James Price wrote:

I'm specifically referring to sending / returning from outboard gear. Do most DAW's handle latency, when sending to and returning from external hardware, automatically or is it generally a case of having to measure and manually enter the round trip delay?

Okay, that's a different matter altogether. Some systems have an automatic
function where it will measure the latency in an effects loop. Some do not,
and you just have to measure it yourself and line the pips up on the screen.

The good news is that for most analogue processing, the latency is close
enough to zero that you don't have to worry about it. You only have to
worry about the latency of the A/D and D/A converters.

Now, a lot of systems which have integrated software and hardware, like the
higher levels of ProTools, and the Merging Technology systems and RADAR,
all will compensate for this automatically because the software is designed
to work with those converters, and the people who designed the software knew
precisely what the converter latency was. But for systems that are not
so carefully integrated, you're on your own.

Personally, I just use the DAW as a big tape machine, I run the outputs of
the DAW into a console and I mix on the console. If I want analogue processing
I put it into the console insert. If I want digital processing, I do it on
the DAW. Doing this eliminates all of your latency issues since all of the
channels are going through the same converters and so all have the same
latency. I understand this technique is not for everyone, however.

Correct me if I'm wrong but, isn't phase frequency dependent and not necessarily a one dimensional constant that can be fixed by delaying a signal? Thus, is it possible to have phase issues when running multiple tracks to multiple compressors within a DAW and/or externally (to outboard gear) despite delay compensation?