Specifications
Appendix E: DSP-Induced Delays in Mixing 85
To see the amount of processing delay on a track
that uses plug-in or hardware inserts:
In the Mix window, Control-click (Windows)
or Command-click (Mac) the track’s Volume in-
dicator to toggle between Volume (“vol”), Peak
(“pk”) and Channel Delay (“dly”) indications.
Delay that Exceeds the Compensation
Limit
When the total delay on a track exceeds the to-
tal available amount of Delay Compensation
(selected in the Playback Engine dialog), no De-
lay Compensation is applied on that track. Any
audio on that track will no longer be properly
time-aligned and will be out of phase. Both the
Delay indicator and Track Compensation indi-
cator turn red to show that the track delay ex-
ceeds the Delay Compensation limit. The maxi-
mum available Delay Compensation is applied
to all other tracks.
To compensate for delay that exceeds the
compensation limit, do one of the following:
If the Delay Compensation Engine setting in
the Playback Engine is set to Short, change the
setting to Long.
– or –
If the Delay Compensation Engine is already
set to Long, do the following:
• Bypass the reported delay for the track by
Start-Control-clicking (Windows) or Com-
mand-Control-clicking (Mac) the Delay in-
dicator. The track information is grayed
out once it is bypassed.
– and –
• Manually nudge any audio data on the
track earlier by the amount of delay re-
ported in the track’s Delay indicator.
Low Latency Monitoring During
Recording
When an audio track is armed for recording
(record-enabled), TrackInput-enabled, Destruc-
tivePunch-enabled, or punched in, the track’s
Delay Compensation is automatically sus-
pended (and the Track Compensation indicator
displays 0). This provides low-latency monitor-
ing on those track outputs.
Tracks that are not record enabled still apply De-
lay Compensation. Pro Tools automatically
compensates for any timing discrepancies be-
tween the recorded material and the delay-com-
pensated mix. When the track is played back
(with both record-enable and TrackInput dis-
abled) it is correctly time-aligned with the other
delay-compensated tracks.
Overriding Suspended Delay Compensation
You can override the automatic suspension of
Delay Compensation on record-enabled tracks,
but you will introduce latency in the signal path
by the amount of Delay Compensation. This la-
tency may be acceptable depending on the re-
cording source.
For example, if you are bus recording a mix-
down, you will want to force-enable Delay Com-
pensation on the record track. Or, if you are re-
cording a source that does not need to monitor
the session, you can force Delay Compensation
on a track so that it is not automatically sus-
pended for record-enabled, TrackInput-enabled,
or DestructivePunch-enabled tracks.
To apply Delay Compensation to tracks where
Delay Compensation was suspended:
Start-Control-click (Windows) or Command-
Control-click (Mac) the Track Compensation in-
dicator. Track delay is applied to the track and
the Track Compensation indicator displays in
blue.
For information on nudging tracks, see the
Pro Tools Reference Guide.