Mark Robinson wrote:
Hi Serge,

I think you will have similar latency problems when trying to real time
monitor with native waves (or any) plugins. The 128 sample latency figure
you are quoting is the ASIO buffer only. This does not include any
buffering done by the plugin to perform its DSP. Have you tried to run a
test of the waves plugins to see what they introduce into the monitoring? I
suspect they are adding a significant amount of additional delay beyond 128
samples. 128 samples at 44.1khz is about 3ms. You double this value when
doing real time monitoring, so you end up with about 6ms total delay if
using no plugins. You can get away with 20ms or so depending on how
sensitive you are to the effect of the delay. That is equal to a path of
about 20' from a amp (if you were a guitar player, for example). I would
give a call or email to the people at UA and ask the questions you posed
here (they have very good support for their products). Also note that
Cubase SX3 has a "constrain delay" function which sacrifices the automatic
delay compensation for better latency when doing live monitoring. See page
290 of the manual for more info on this.

Mark



Hi Mark,

I found out what I needed about the UAD plugs, they will essentially at
least triple my current latency and I will have to use their delay
compensator plugs on tracks that aren't using UAD plugs (same thing with
the PowerCore plugs and even plugs on PT TDM systems). As for the Waves
plugs running natively I haven't had any audible problems to date,
and I've been using them for a few years now. As far as I understood,
automatic delay compensation would have me covered while using native
plugs, and as long as they all get their processing done within the
alloted ASIO buffer time, all audio will come out in sync in the end (if
they don't, audio skips and stutters, and buffer has to be increased).


The latency issue gets even more complex in my case because I am using
hardware synths as my sources, and I assume each has a different
inherent MIDI *and* audio latency. At this point I'm not even sure how
to properly measure and compensate for such a thing, as the synth
manuals don't give any numbers nor even mention such problem exists (or
maybe it's just in my head?). I already made sure I am using identical
MIDI interfaces across the board, and am currently reexaming my
monitoring situation. I cannot afford the cash or space for a large
format console now (I am running 32 analog and 16 digital I/O) to go
around it and I still like hearing what things sound like as I'm working
on a song. I guess I'll keep looking. I am curious how large digital
facilities deal with such a thing - they probably sequence and record
their material, THEN mix it?.

Serge