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Cubasis, lack of PDC - are there workarounds/ best practices?
I really like Cubasis, but the lack of Plugin Delay Compensation (PDC) ruins the experience, and makes it almost unusable for me.
Stick a few effects on a few tracks, and pretty quickly all the tracks have very noticably different lags/ phase relationships, the timing is quite off - its frustrating.
Timing is such a fundamental aspect of music, it seems crazy to me that this stands uncorrected, in such an otherwise fantastic DAW.
I've tried using Logic on ipad, but I find it too buggy, and unreliable.
My current solution is at some point to move the stems to Logic on my laptop. This is 'ok' but annoying, and I then have to manually align everything anyways.
Is anyone using any tricks or techniques to overcome this limitation? Perhaps theres some brilliant workaround I'm unaware of?
And anyway, does this affect you, how do you feel about it?
Thanks!
Comments
There's no need to realign anything, just export the entire project to the Mac using Airdrop and open it in Logic?!
(Do a bounce in place for those tracks using plug-ins that are not available on the Mac).
Maybe part of the issue is that I record everything as midi (as I often swap instruments), then add effects, & then record new parts as I build the track. So subsequent recorded parts are 'timed' to already lagged audio (so even more lags are created). So, if I bounce or export, there are def lags that need to be corrected.
LogicPro for iPad already does PDC already so when you bounce the track the latency is compensated for.
I've not had a single case where things go 'out of time/sync' due to plug-ins introducing latency?!
The lack of PDC In Cubasis it's very evident though...
I think @mysterycat was talking about exporting stems from Cubasis to Logic on the Mac, not using Logic on the iPad.
Oops, my bad...
...maybe the next Cubasis update will address a thing or two if we get lucky...
I haven't had a huge problem except for certain effects with lookahead. In particular, Pro L-2, so if I need it on one track, I'll put it on all of them so they all have the same latency.
I do that and I don’t have any problems of lagging. It must be an effect you use that cause it. My current track as about twenty tracks. 8 of them guitars with effects on them. About 4 synths out of a douze playing at the same time. Plus 3 layers of drums. No noticeable delay.
I have eq and compression on many tracks.
iPad Pro M2. iOS 18
I never usually have issues with PDC in Cubasis 3. Then again I tend to stick to the internal effects and sounds for the most part. Hopefully PDC will come in the next Cubasis 3 update. 🙏
For PDC in general...
'Synths' seldom add latency, it's when using effects that rely heavily on look-ahead buffers (compressors, limiters, pitch-shifters, noice reducers etc.) where latency can become an issue especially when stacking many of them on top of each other on multiple tracks.
Some audio-interfaces are also faster than others so audio-recordings need to be compensated for as well.
Cubase does have timing calibration for audio recording though.
PDC must be right near, if not, top of the missing features list for C3. Fingers crossed!
Yes! Even a basic track delay setting in ms could be workable to manually offset things.
(bipolar setting +-)
Desktop Cubase has had this for years so I too live in hope for PDC and/or better sync options for Cubasis in the future.
I've only gotten it to work somewhat reliably when using the built-in speakers and the built-in microphone...
...when using an external audio-interface with synths and stuff connected it doesn't work at all since it relies on using the built-in microphone and speakers to 'do its thing'.
Ok - I think, if I become more strict about turning effects off, before recording new parts, maybe I can get this under control a little bit better.
As mentioned - I also find the recording calibration to be fairly random.. 😁
Like every year I shall pray to the Cubasis gods for PDC!
Interesting, sadly not in a good way.
PDC Correction Plugin idea - very simple.
somebody please make this?!
actually, maybe only one plugin is needed at the end of each chain - just compare real world time to sample timestamp. And this would potentially be better, as it'd include instrument delay.
Just about the only downside of PDC is aded latency, ie. all things get delayed until all the plug-ins have done their processing and this will negatively affect realtime-performance, there's simply no way around it when absolute sync is needed.
Some DAWs have a 'low latency modes' which temporarily disable plug-ins that introduce a lot of latency above a set threshold to make recording manageable.
In order for Cubasis to retain it's real-time response it would have to disable the plug-ins that add excessive delay during recording and then during playback compensate for the delay to keep the tracks in sync.
PDC sounds 'easy' but it will always be a compromise...
I agree, thats the way to do it - the 'low latency/ disable fx' toggle seems the correct compromise.
The only two things I've found that work for me in Cubasis is:
There as to be a couple popular culprit because like I said I have been using Cubasis since 2017, have created many dozen projects with over 40 tracks, each tracks a couple effects, many group tracks and I have never encountered that problem.
The only Fabfilter I have is pro-q 4
Plugins that require a lookahead buffer are usually what add latency. Most effects don't need that.
Limiters generally need to listen to some of the upcoming audio before deciding how to attenuate it in order to avoid distortion as much as possible. Avoiding any limiter with a lookahead buffer except on the master can help. Anything that does pitch correction is going to need a lookahead buffer as well. You can't know how to shift the audio if the audio hasn't already arrived. Everything else I can think of would only add latency if the coding isn't tight.
However, chaining a bunch of FX together can build up latency. Everything happens inside buffers (chunks of audio). A normal plugin should be able to do all its work in a single buffer. But if the next plugin is acting in serial it can't act on the first plugin's output until the next buffer - and so on down the line.
Even multi-threaded audio can't help with that. It can only help with FX that can be processed in parallel.
I see what you are saying @mysterycat , I am trying to do work in Cubasis and track are out of sync and I hardly have nothing in my project.
Something is up with Cubasis
I wonder if turning off multi-core processing improves things any.
Multi-core audio processing requires buffering of audio so that it all gets assembled in the proper order before output. Maybe there's something about this process that gets out of whack. I can visualize how it might.
I will try that tonight. I don’t know if it’s related but I think it started when I upgraded to 18.7.0
@Jamie_Mallender , thoughts on this ?
Thanks @Jamie_Mallender ..I’ll check out your discord