Snapback Latency, PDC, and Reverse ReaVerb

[@Cableguys]

Thank you Dan, for highlighting this topic. We've tested latency for Snapback in Ableton Live, Cubase, Bitwig, Logic, FL Studio, and Pro Tools. Each handled plugin delay compensation (PDC) effectively. We've also tested changing latency on the fly, and everything worked smoothly. A notable mention goes to Maschine: it has no PDC implemented at all. And yes, Bitwig has an upper limit of 2 seconds latency, so if you import a 2 seconds user file you hit that limit. Our included samples have 35ms in the Short category, while all others add 135ms. Beyond that, with the Snapback layer set to "Off", there is base latency of 27ms (required for Audio Trigger and Limiter), and 17ms in MIDI mode. Ableton Live has an ongoing issue that affects plugins relying on position-based processing after a latency-inducing plugin. While audio blocks are compensated correctly, position-dependent processing (e.g., beat-synced LFOs) can still be misaligned. For our plugins, such as ShaperBox and Kickstart, this can be worked around by using audio or MIDI triggering instead of relying on position information.

[@Cableguys]

@@timbeneton8068 None that we'd be aware of.

[@SlangstonHuge]

am i basically reading i shouldnt even use this for ableton if i want to do reverse reverb on vocals

[@antoineguilbeault8025]

@@SlangstonHuge No that's not what you are reading

[@maxmeyer6395]

I remember KSHMR pointing this out back in live 8 but they still haven't fixed that to this day :/ What a shame :(

[@Italliving]

bitwig also has the device called "time shift" and regulates/compensates all time delays by delaying all others to the set time if you need more then these 2 sec.

[@draztiqmeshaz6226]

"Unsurprisingly it was the extraordinary demands of early 21st century music producers that finally pushed humanity to develop time travel" -transcript from a tour of The Hall of Time, AD 2346

[@younyounyoun.]

😂

[@anatomicallymodernhuman5175]

We’ve come a long way since the days when we used to flip the 2” tape over and print reverb to an empty pair of tracks, flip it back over, and judge the result, maybe trying it 3 or 4 more times before being fully satisfied. We didn’t think it was a hassle back then. It was fun.

[@ghfjfghjasdfasdf]

For something as simple as applying a bit of reverb… wild west

[@stevedoesnt]

I cannot overstate how fun the discovery of doing tricks like this on tape is. The payoff fills my soul.

[@searchiemusic]

damn, didn't think of that one, def gonna give that a try on my Fostex!

[@jordanolson]

Oh hi David

[@jprost]

this this and more of this.

[@adrenakrohm]

Hey Dan, I'm honoured to be mentioned on your wonderful channel. I was caught a bit off guard seeing this today. Re my comment of latency, I did mention in the video that I completely understood why it's there and I thought I was clear in emphasing it wasn't the fault of Cableguys and rather the DAW itself. It was particularly bad in Ableton but quite workable in Cubase. The solution, as you say, is to get it sounding correct and then bounce it out. After that, there's no issue whatseover. Re switching to Reaper: Nice joke, however having used Cubase for >25 years it would take quite a bit (nothing I can think of TBH) before I made a switch. That said, ReaVerb does look particularly impressive. Excellent and informative video as always, Dan. Thanks for posting it.

[@Joe90Production]

I was a Cubase user of 15+ years professionally and I switched to Reaper. It took a good few months to get everything set up exactly as I liked it, but once I did, it f-ing flew. When an old song gets cut and I have to go back to Cubase to render stems or tweak it, it feels like dragging my feet through sand.

[@Projektor_music]

honestly as someone who has a hybrid workflow between ableton and reaper I recall only needing to mix a few of my projects in reaper till I found my workflow (at least the mixing side, I admit I have never produced in reaper so I can't say anything about stuff like MIDI capabilities or how it deals with a large amount of automations)

[@ReductioAdAbsurdum]

I switched to Reaper after 10+ years of Cubase, because my son wanted to learn a DAW and I didn't want to share my Cubase dongle. I started learning Reaper just to help him. But the more I used Reaper, the more I used Reaper, and eventually couldn't imagine going back to Cubase. IMO, it's like FFMPEG, a tool that any audio engineer should know. It's not just that it's stable, fast, and incredibly powerful, it's that it's all those things while being a 15MB download with no DRM. *"I have never produced in reaper so I can't say anything about stuff like MIDI capabilities or how it deals with a large amount of automations"* It's automation prowess is huge. Among other things, it supports something call "automation items", which are chunks of automation data that can be treated just like media items: moved around, copied/pasted, looped, pooled (editing one, edits all), split, trimmed, stretched, scaled, skewed, etc. If you stack automation items in an automation lane, they sum. They can be saved/loaded, so I've done things like record my guitar vibrato via MIDI GUITAR 2, saved it, then I can load my vibrato into any CC lane and edit it to taste. Plugins like Gatekeeper or ShaperBox can be trivially replicated using automation items.

[@miquelmarti6537]

​I'v been using reaper since their first beta. Before that I was working professionaly on protools. Both latency handling, channel routing and VST efficiency are off the charts. You won't find anything better than that. Of course there are dowsides: being able to customize everything means your neighbour is not using the same shortcuts as you, the interface is easy but feels like 1995 and Cubase still has a more mature midi arrangement. But tools are just tools. Music matters more. Simply use what you know the best.

[@cefk9944]

I switched to Reaper mainly for this reason, a few years back .. shortly after that, I became aware of your channel. Since then, I'm happy, whenever I see a new Worrall-video popping up. Learned a lot, since .. so: Thank you :)

[@seatyourself7082]

just downloaded reaper now cause i read some interview with the creator and damn thats one of the coolest people ever

[@AtlasMvm]

whats the interview? interested

[@piergiorgioclem]

"...that little problem of time travel..." awesome 😀

[@Hocus_Tokus]

Great video ! Thank you for the reverse reverb trick in ReaVerb ! (And glad to discover that my DAW of choice will correctly handle plugin automation with 2s of latency !)

[@DoSeOst]

What made me buy the Reaper license as a musician and amateur in recording music is the availability and quality of official and unofficial tutorials! As I switched to Reaper I found a short Video to every question I had. That's just incredible. I am a guy that reads manuals, but doing so for Reaper from beginning to end would have been time efficient. And as my Notebook is not the fastest one, I was quite happy to see that CPU load was less than the with other two DAWs I used before. 😁

[@timbeneton8068]

Cubase does it even better 🤫

[@avrahax7714]

@@timbeneton8068 yes with crashes 🤣

[@LordFarnsworth]

​@@timbeneton8068cpu load is not better in cubase. The UI might be more intuitive, but the workflows are not.

[@ranajoyshil]

@@timbeneton8068 cope

[@mylittleheartscar]

I'm so glad this technique is blowing up. There's many edm bangers that have a little "snap back" that I like and want to hear more of and know how was done

[@shaihulud4515]

That's the first videos from you Dan, where I correctly guessed what exactly the issue was by the title alone. When I was faced with this problem (alongside a long list of others, Samplitude just could or would not handle) I took a deep breath, straightened my back, and made a blind jump. Luckyly, Reaper got me!

[@F4xP4s]

I set my Snapback to use a 5 year long sample of a forex trend to predict investments.

[@mihneazoican2479]

You’re spoiling us after your little vacation

[@somewhere-else]

i suspect the “vacation” was actually “producing tons of course material”.. really looking forward to that series.

[@227]

Just realized that I've never heard ARA pronounced, so I was like, "wait, what's an aura plugin" before I turned subtitles on. Which is to say, thanks for the subtitles.

[@ThreadBomb]

He also pronounces DAW the best way.

[@DeltaEntropy]

Is that not how everyone says it?

[@enrifretless]

Thanks Dan!, I really liked the best solution comment ..."switch to Reaper!" 🤓🤣👍🏻

[@Trentcast]

I just stopped everything I was about to do to watch this when I got on and saw there’s a new video from you, Dan.

[@Projektor_music]

As someone who uses ableton for the production of their music and reaper for the mix & master the delay compensation is great in reaper. Ableton's PDC is notorious because it was never designed for modern production. In essence any delay is only compensated at the end of the chain. This will minimize calculations and works great for performance but it does mean that stuff like LFO tool being out of sync with the project is quite common (I believe that is the reason LFO tool comes with manual compensation too, which i often miss on other plugins)

[@giltedgeorge]

You are correct in how abletons PDC functions, I found a "hack" to fix it. Creating an effects rack with 2 parallel fx signal's, 1 muted and the other with lfotool/shaperbox fix's timing issues. For some reason it calculates PDC correctly at the start and end of a signal, but also when parallel processing.

[@AndroidGamingApps]

Ableton latency is ass.

[@markuskopter]

@@giltedgeorge I managed to fix PDC in Shaperbox/Ableton by using MIDI triggers for timing in Shaperbox.

[@giltedgeorge]

@@markuskopter its certainly an option, but I personally didn't like having to create loads of midi trigger channels, I sidechain a lot of stuff. I moved to reaper after realizing most daws suck at PDC.

[@RAISING_WOLVES]

@@giltedgeorge You don't have to create loads of additional channels, you can stack External Instrument devices as parallel chains within an Instrument Rack (or racks) from a single trigger track. If you're trigger *is* a Kick drum in a sampler, even better: no additional tracks required - just parallel instances of External Instruments alongside the sampler within one Instrument Rack. and set their MIDI output to the instances of Shaperbox 3. I've not had any real significant latency issues with Shaperbox 3 set to audio triggering or MIDI triggering in Ableton Live, but find MIDI triggering to be the most stable for more complex tasks.

[@theoryofmine7473]

ReaVerb is the best! I've had odd field recordings reversed into a reverb IR at around 10 seconds. Crazy sounds.

[@p0dlyryszard]

Great explanation as always. Just last week I had to explain the necessity of latency in the absence of time travel to a user of Maschine (a beat making software that pretends to be a DAW and has no PDC whatsoever) on reddit.

[@seedmole]

I spent the last two or so years building my own DAW-esque setup in Pure Data, and one of the biggest rabbit holes was handling latency. Ultimately I settled on sticking to delay-based effects, which can resolve latency issues by using a separate playback line from the feedback line. By keeping these effects to ones where a delay is already present, and merely shortening the delay by the latency amount, they can be aligned properly in a live monitoring situation.

[@JuliusJuluis]

Great to have another video of you. Missed your content

[@djcrote76]

Thank you for the reverse delay explanation in reaverb

[@kirkegodfrey414]

Even when I come to watch these thinking I don’t care…. I LEARN THINGS.

[@richardlynneweisgerber2552]

If or when I do get off my butt and get my machines running during this incredible gap this is my circus tent where I can see already, tons of 11x17 drawings trysee what Dan Worrall says throughout this gem. Thank You, Maestro!

[@bobrv8]

Love the humour in this one Dan.

[@JohnLloydDavis]

I was in the habit of just having the reverse reverb happening once on a snare, bounce it in place, then cut and paste that to whenever I needed it to occur. I had no idea there was a realtime solution :)

[@DanWorrall]

Your method is perfectly fine on a snare. But if you want to reverse reverb certain words of a vocal, this trick rules!

[@samuliauno8163]

​@@DanWorrallSpeech detection automation parameter when?

[@JohnLloydDavis]

@@DanWorrall Yes of course. It's an awesome tip Dan thanks.

[@myyt4382]

Me neither! That was a great tip!

[@daviHuggMonster]

as a happy Reaper user I agree. Why I totally hesitating on using any other (I do have 2 others) I stream live with it, and except some itsy bitsy problems can occur, often just the plugin not behaving makes reaper crash...then it comes in handy if it has autosave (that some still don't really have implemented either...or one that you can't configure) On slapback I need to test it myself. I work mostly with midi and render , rather then any live recording or live play/input on keys or pads so latency isn't really a problem

[@llRoBoBinHoll]

I’ve always thought about when plug-in manufacturers and DAW makers are going to introduce some sort of MIDI lookahead for sequenced notes. Something that doesn’t require latency. Would be really useful for sequencing sounds with long attacks as well. The swell could then start in anticipation of the note

[@carl.wunsche]

That reverse reverb tip was PRICELESS!!

[@Ouvii]

I'm here for the sass and Reaper superiority.

[@brokko_le3]

I just bought the plugin without testing it, assuming there would be latency, because I liked the idea anyway: I was tired of jumping though hoops to get this effect and it was on sale, so why not. Nobody was talking about latency in any reviews, or on the site. If there was no latency somehow, I assumed it would be a major headline. So, I figured worse case I'd just have to make a beat and sample it, which I would still be fine. Turns out it works great and I only notice it on live playing. It's really a fun plugin.

[@jasonmalcolmgibbins]

I remember going through all this when I released my plugin, Mirror (JMG Sound)

[@natigrinkrug]

He's back! We love your work Dan

[@MatthiasLindemann-hp2zr]

I'm working with "Cubase 14" and the Asio driver "asio2wasapi". I have an input latency of "164 ms", an output latency of "327 ms" and an Asio-Guard latency of "327 ms". And everything works as it should, Cubase can handle latencies very well.

[@laughinginthe90s]

That's an insane amount of latency lol. Wasapi should be less than 30ms, unless you're running high samplerates

[@MatthiasLindemann-hp2zr]

@@laughinginthe90s :D I did this to get more performance out of my CPU. I don't work with MIDI or external devices, so low latencies are negligible for me.

[@Rocknrolldaddy81-xy8ur]

Dan, every year you write and record a few great tunes that you use on your videos. I’m sure I’m not the only independent producer watching that would love to see some videos about the whole process…including the writing, arranging and playing.

[@DanWorrall]

Thank you! I'm not sure my process could be captured in a tutorial, nor that it would be desirable to emulate it. I basically just fumble about until I hear something I like...

[@RegebroRepairs]

Yeah, I'm evaluating Reaper now, because Ableton Live adds latency if you have any monitoring on while recording (without any plugins), and that's bloody annoying as every time I forget to turn off monitoring, I have to re-record. This bug (because it bloody well is a bug) has been there for at least 15 years. It could easily compensate for it, but it doesn't.

[@seatyourself7082]

there is a button to turn it off in 12, "keep latency". But yeah youre right

[@RegebroRepairs]

@seatyourself7082 Oh, they finally fixed in 12. Wow. Yeah not paying for that upgrade, before I tried out reaper properly. I've payed many hundreds of Euros for live, that's the first improvement I actually needed. 😄

[@klauba]

You use Ableton Live to record audio?

[@RegebroRepairs]

@klauba Yes, it works perfectly well for that, as long as you remember to turn off monitoring. 😄 Live is easy to use and has a good workflow. But I don't really use the clips feature much anymore, which is the reason I started using it back in the stone age.

[@VoidOnly]

These are the most entertaining tutorials

[@gayronaldo231]

Ur demo track has drawcia soul vibes. Nice.

[@EdwinDekker71]

Using Cubase pro and Reaper, I didn't even know about those various pdc issues.

[@-______-______-]

Cubase is also good right?

[@SamHocking]

Nor me on Bitwig. I don't even think about this stuff (can't reproduce Dan's level one issue with fabfilter MB linear phase mode even) and if a plugin is incorrectly reporting its own latency, you just slap a TimeShift device in front and correct it.

[@DrBuffaloBalls]

@@-______-______-Cubase has incredibly good PDC. The only time it might ever go out of sync is if I use some weird niche non-commercial hobbyist plugins that don’t report their latency correctly. But 99,9% of all plugins I’ve ever tried work perfectly.

[@werkstattmanke]

How are you this much of a nerd? I mean that in the most admiring way possible.

[@Levibetz]

I'm a pro tools user, I've never had delay compensation issues, in fact you can key in manual offsets which I use to time align drum recordings and other things sometimes. Of course if you try to monitor through the plugin, yeah it gets all whacked out, but you just disable the plugin and move on with your life. That said I may have to switch to reaper in the future, I can't give avid more money and PT 11 is a bit long in the tooth now.

[@N8oRMusic]

Not giving up all the awesome logic stock effects and instruments to switch to reaper just because it can do a reverse snare better.

[@AlexPettyMusic]

Reaper does A LOT more than this trick, my friend. Reaper is an insanely good DAW in ways other DAWs can't dream of approaching.

[@No.0.o.0]

Reaper is cool, i prefer something else but i like most other DAWs. I made a snapback clone but i still might get it because the samples are great, love goldbaby’s work.

[@SamHocking]

Bitwig has Time Shift & PDC make all these troubles go away for both notes or signals. Easier than Reaper even.

[@SynthfulDuck]

Apparently some people don't use Arch Linux either

[@anteshell]

8:21 In theory, this time travel problem could already be solved when reading midi or samples. There could be a second ghost playback or forward look that inspects what is coming and makes the plugins react accordingly. This would eliminate latency on mixing phase, although obviously that could not be used when playing live. I wonder why nobody has ever thought about doing something like this as memory and CPU limitations have practically been non-existent for years now. Instead, the go-to solution is just to add more latency. It's easy, simple and requires no innovation.

[@danielzahariakezdi]

Reaper ❤

[@tabs1913]

Bless my ears, it's a new DW vid.

[@ArguZ72]

My main DAW has that exact problem...if I load Softube's Console 1 into a track and then change the effects in the container it does not update until i dis and re-enable the instance. So i tried Logic, and there the compensation happens after 2 bars of playback... Then i tried Live and here it works once you stop and start playback. So now i need to download and try Reaper just to try it there.. And Bitwig of course :)

[@Cableguys]

In our tests, the latest versions of Ableton Live, Cubase, Bitwig, Logic, FL Studio, and Pro Tools pick up changes to latency immediately. Are you using the latest versions of Live? Regarding the 2 bars of Logic that you mentioned.. maybe we missed that, but it all seemed seamless to us.

[@cellardoreproductions]

I’ve used a bunch of these on a few projects and it caused a reasonable delay in what I was seeing and hearing

[@KrulliKlikk]

As a 15 year long Reaper user, I’m always so surprised to hear people talk about their daws and it feels like they’re talking about problems from the Stone Age.

[@orbitfold]

Was really curious about SnapBack and latency. It could maybe work via ARA to see the future.

[@KingGrio]

Hey Dan ! I've switched to Reaper and ditched Reason after growing increasingly frustrated with Reason's routing and handling of midi. I've seen in protools that sends can be inserted in the middle of a plugin chain, just like an insert effect. This is great to have sends before some final effects and avoids cluttering the mixer section. Do you know if something like that can be done in Reaper ?

[@DanWorrall]

Not in the same way. You can achieve the same result, somewhat less intuitively, by sending from different channels on that track: set the send to come from (eg) channels 3&4, then use the plugin pins to route to 3&4 from whichever point in your plugin chain you want. Personally I'm more likely to use the folder / subgroup feature: I'll have the first part of my plugin chain on the sub track, send from that, then complete the dry signal processing on the parent track.

[@KingGrio]

​@@DanWorrall alright thanks for the tips ! I'm not sure this workflow is as nice as protools, but I don't think it's enticing enough for me to switch again, especially since protools is pricey. For now I'm glad Reaper is a better DAW, and that I can still load Reason as a VST when I need its synths and some of the nice effects it has.

[@G_handle]

​@@DanWorrallThat would be a great video. Just on complex routing in Reaper.

[@PauLtus_B]

I'm sorry to hijack your question but: As a current Reason user who's lost some patience with that DAW, I'm curious about your experience, especially in terms of parallel processing.

[@KingGrio]

@@PauLtus_B Hi! Honestly I'd say Reaper is a really good DAW. Better than Reason at the very least. For parallel processing you can either: use a pre-fx and pre-fader send and just have 2 mixer channels and then blend them in parallel, adjust the levels using the faders. Or if you want your mixer section to have less faders you can go in the insert effects, extend the number of inputs/outputs of the insert effect chain and fork a copy of your signal in the insert effect section (eg. channels 3 and 4 for stereo), then merge them back using the default "mixer" insert effect to control the levels. This second option is like what you'd do in the rack section of Reason, so you don't have too many channel strips in the mixer section. I use either of these methods depending on whether I think I'll want to adjust while mixing (method 1) or set up the blend once and forget about it for the rest of the mixing session (method 2). I haven't noticed any latency or phase issues (as Reason might give you when it alerts you that you used what it thinks is "unconventional routing" as Dan warned us about, then Reason decides it won't latency compensate for you and your elaborate parallel processing now has phase artifacts) because I picked one method or the other. One negative thing I can say about Reaper though: be careful about default behavior when routing in the insert effects. If you do not route audio or click-out routing and leave it unassigned, Reaper's default behavior is to pass that audio through as if the plugin was not there, while I expected unassigned audio to be muted due to the absence of routing. This can be configured of course, but it's not what I first expected. BUT: if you use Reason and forget to connect the wires (eg. channels 3 and 4) in Reason then it does get muted. That's Reason now tricking you I guess, but it's confusing when Reaper and Reason are working against each other with regards to routing. Also MIDI: it seems if you stack synth VSTs the default behavior is that each synth becomes the MIDI input for the next synth in the chain, and you have deactivate that if you want all synths to receive MIDI directly from the MIDI lane. Or if you use a send: MIDI also gets sent by default so some of my instruments were getting triggered by sends while I was trying to process audio. To summarize: Reaper by default likes to pass audio and MIDI through things, while I prefer and expect things to not pass through unless I specifically ask for it. A couple of times I found I was parallel processing by accident or sending MIDI notes accidentally. This can all be changed in Reaper's default behavior settings which is highly configurable though. Just be aware of that, configure Reaper to your liking, and you should be good to go.

[@deepstructure]

How many people are actually trying to use a snapback effect live? My guess is 99% aren't.

[@butterflap]

I have had nothing but catastrophic timing issues with Ableton live PDC to the point the support team seemed to give up since there was no way to fix the entire audio engine or whatever. It has always incorrectly calculated my latency upon reopening a project and it was years of head smacking frustration trying to figure out why my projects kept sounding different when I reopened them. I have to drag every track around the project to force Ableton to recalculate latency correctly and it still won't calculate correctly on groups. This is a huge reason I switched to Bitwig and interestingly enough this plugin presented immediate timing issues in Ableton but not in Bitwig although I see there is apparently an upper limit for Bitwig that I can't seem to replicate? Weird.

[@G_handle]

Two Dan Worrall Videos! Quick....somebody criticize this shit so Dad comes & plays with us again.

[@RealGengarTV]

Hi so I've not yet completely watched the video but as a cubase user, if the plugin was giving me latency issues I'd just find what I'd like, render in place, freeze the plugin track and just nudge the newly rendered track to align with the original track 🤷🏻‍♂️ maybe a deal breaker for a live sett but not at all for studio work. Edit; now that I've finished watching; yes direct monitoring is just as problematic as using this live but then back to my point, this is a mix tool not necessarily a tracking tool. This plugin has a "fix it in post" mentality and that's fine, shit in is still going to give shit out even if it's polished shit

[@marceloribeirosimoes8959]

The "lookahead" would have a new use in this plugin... ...but I use Reaper... ...so, whatever... Thank you, Dan!!!!!!

[@SamHocking]

To be fair, ProTools (lookahead broken until recently), Cubendo, Logic, FL Studio, Studio 1, Bitwig and Digital Performer all support PDC and Lookahead. Ablelton claims to but it's a bot broken like ProTools was last time I looked into it.

[@CapaUno1322]

Yo Dan, I just got the Arturia FX collection for $49! Amazing! If you don't have it already I'd grab it now.....have a fun day!

[@darkcharmrecords]

where is it at that price?

[@yatoimtop]

​@@darkcharmrecords I believe that price is a loyalty price on the Arturia website. You might need to already own their complete synth suite as well?

[@CapaUno1322]

@@darkcharmrecords I got it on the black friday offer, it might have been one day or a personal one? But I don't think it was specific to me, just a lucky day, I didn't hang around if you get me, steal of the century, maybe they'll have a christmas offer as well? Just to say I have had a lot of patience with buying plugins before like waiting for Kontakt every summer, so you have to sign up for notifications and stay on the case at the right time of year, good luck buddy!

[@CapaUno1322]

@@darkcharmrecords Here's a freebie for you FKFX INFLUX

[@saibojichi]

Reaper Rule！Thanks for this tip！

[@Beatsbasteln]

Bitwig has pretty good delay compensation too, but it has a limit of 2sec of latency, so you can't do too crazy things. Cubase is better in that regard. There I have never reached the limit, if it exists

[@LiamGaughan]

Alright alright, I use Pro Tools, we get it.

[@KevinSimpson031]

I see you have, a large buffer size. Mine seems to be limited at 4096 samples, how do you get yours to be so high? Could be a hardware limitation?

[@DanWorrall]

That's not the buffer size that's the plugin / channel latency. My buffer size is generally 128 samples.

[@sickmessiah]

Studio one compensates just fine ..

[@KingGrio]

Hi Dan! I've always wondered if you had thoughts to share on Steven Slate plugins. I guess many of them are competitors to "standard" effects like the 1176 compressor, neve EQ and SSL EQ and compressors. But one of them really intrigues me: the FG-X. There is an 11 year old video where 10 dB of gain is added to a mix without crushing it. My paranoid tendencies make me want to think all he did was have a mix not peaking at all at 0dB that he just turned up, deceiving everyone. But Steven Slate has demonstrated competence when mixing, so I'd be surprised to learn he was a complete con man. Do you have any idea how a mastering tool can add so much gain wihout altering the mix?

[@DanWorrall]

I never tried FG-X but generally speaking limiters use clever, program dependent time constants, and mask distortion with transients. I also don't think SS is a grifter, but I would be amazed if he didn't specifically choose a mix that could take that kind of processing without falling apart.

[@KingGrio]

@@DanWorrall Hi Dan ! Thanks a lot for replying ! KZbin is inconvenient in that way that I don't get notified of your response and have to remember to check back in. I've gotten back to mix engineering, and as you can guess I'm looking at Steven Slate tutorials because I really like how his drums end up sounding. Would you give a drum mixing tutorial ? I find drums to complex to mix. I know most "common" tricks in rock: 1176 all buttons in the overheads or room mics in parallel, send the kick and snare to a bus and compress them hard, and besides that gently compress your direct kick and snare mic and EQ everything, then slap an SSL compressor on the drum bus and/or a fairchild. But even knowing that I don't get very good drum mixes. I noticed Steven Slate brings up a lot of low end from sources like room mics and overheads where my instinct usually tell me to cut out low end from those because they are messy with phase issues and roomy mud. Also it seems that the high hat and crashes are made loud by compression, not by specifically trying to turn them up. All of this is really delicate, and a general guidance/philosophy from you would really help.

[@DanWorrall]

It's a big topic, and tricky to cover well as every kit and drummer is different and presents different issues. Two general tips that might help though: personally my "overheads" are not just for cymbals, I try to get a good overall picture of the whole kit from them, barring kick which nearly always sounds a bit weak in the overheads. But if the snare and toms sound thin in the overheads I will absolutely boost the lows to make it sound more balanced, and I'll check the phase relationship with the close mics so I can use those to just reinforce the sound from the overheads. Room mics will usually be sufficiently decorrelated from the rest of the kit that you don't have to worry about phase, but I do try to avoid lots of messy splashy cymbals. I might pick ribbons if I'm tracking, otherwise I'm not afraid to use a lowpass filter. Low frequencies sound big in room mics, so if you want a bigger room, boost away! Final tip: you nearly always need to cut midrange from real drums: 500 or 600 ish typically. Sometimes a bit, sometimes a lot, but pretty much always some. Might be helpful to start with a little cut there on the drum bus before you dive into the individual channels.

[@KingGrio]

@@DanWorrall Thanks Dan. I'll try to put that into practice. So I can go ahead and boost lows on room mics ? That might be the first thing I try, I thought the direct kick mic had the duty to bring in the low end. I also notice that you are making a distinction regarding the role of the kick in the overheads and in the room mic. So far I thought "it's not a direct mic, so the kick will be equally weak and it doesn't make much difference whether it's overhead or room". I'll try to come back here and read your advice, and see if I can apply the Steven Slate methods, and see what I come up with. Thanks again !

[@DanWorrall]

@KingGrio the low fundamental of the kick will likely come mostly from the close mic. But the region from 100 to 200 might sound good in the room. Steven Slate has the confidence to know when something needs a good old boost somewhere, and go ahead and do it. That comes with practise! Meanwhile, don't be afraid to try that big old boost and hear what happens. If it sounds bad, just dial it back again. Doing that lots of times is how you gain the confidence to make big moves when they're necessary.

[@jeffreyhanc1711]

Dan: “if we could devise apps that accurately measured the future I’m sure there would be more significant uses than VSTs to make your beats groovier.” Beat makers (like myself): “really? Like what…?”

[@DanWorrall]

A coffee machine that finishes brewing at the exact moment you start to want coffee.

[@jeffreyhanc1711]

@ that’s a good one. Applying for legal status in Canada/UK/Australia/etc before last week’s elections is another one (for a States perspective). But I digress…

[@Kevhuman]

Maybe a daw that predicts when I'm going to buy a new plugin and automatically loads up a plugjn I already have that invariably does the same thing

[@TollsterMensch]

How do you even work without automatic PDC? All those plugins with lookahead would cause so much chaos.

[@DanWorrall]

You could just avoid lookahead or linear phase type stuff and stick to zero latency plugins. Or you could compensate manually, eg if you have a latent plugin on your drum bus, also add the same plugin (or something with equal latency) on all your other buses as well. But yeah, I can't be bothered with that so I use Reaper.

[@TValoy]

​@@DanWorrall Ah.. I've heard of people saying that you have to duplicate the plugins on you parallel buses, now I get it. They're not using Reaper 😅

[@JanMichalSzulew]

Just yesterday I was thinking "I wonder how Dan's doing, haven't seen a video from him for a while", and the simulation glitched again

[@Rocknrolldaddy81-xy8ur]

I know I’m gonna get torn apart for this comment. Logic has a neat feature called “low latency monitoring”…it basically turns everything with latency off for recording. Works good for me. Mind you, I’m not doing any fancy processing or routing …only have a basement setup with 4 mic pres on MacBook Air. Don’t use much midi…. Love Dans work and literally search this channel daily for the next drop. Keep up the amazing work!

[@audioinfo2]

I have a quite irrelevant question to the video: is it a good practice to cut the low end under the fundamental when mastering or should you cut it when mixing and if so how should I? Thanks in advance!

[@SamiJumppanen]

Really old mixing advice is to cut everything above and below the wanted signal on the track. Practically in mixing we're cutting much more on many tracks. Those cuts are not indefinitely steep (there still are lows and highs after the eq/filter). When the mix is mastered, it's amplified and the sum of tracks still may lift up some unnecessary lows, and you might find it useful to cut some. The fundamental frequency of a note of an instrument or voice should not blindly be used as a guide. We are mostly listening the overtones.

[@DanWorrall]

If there's a lot of low frequency rubbish below the important content then it's definitely helpful to cut that out, usually using a high pass filter. If there isn't a lot of low frequency rubbish then the filter is optional: it probably won't do any harm, as you often read online: don't worry about headroom, or phase unless you're planning to run it in parallel, just make sure you don't set it too high and remove desirable low frequency content (sometimes the performance includes noise from the performer- pedal thumps etc- which you might want to preserve for people with really good speakers!)

[@ronmoes42]

Hey governor Dan, could you do a video on reaper and why you swear by reaper? I'm on sonar platinum and i'm bound to buy another DAW soon, as I have reaper on my radar! Cheers

[@jahana81]

I love Reaper!

[@spencersolberg]

I was surprised that it didn't use ARA, but my DAW doesn't support that anyway

[@neuroxik]

Couldn't we just bounce the SnapBack track? I know it's more of a hassle than just having it in real time but we already do that with many tracks for other purposes than PDC, like resource management (and keep a muted inactive backup of the track that created the bounce)

[@DanWorrall]

Bouncing will remove the latent sluggishness and make your parameter changes happen immediately again. If the PDC wasn't actually working correctly however, it won't fix that, unless you also manually correct the timing of the bounce.

[@neuroxik]

@DanWorrall Yah, I forgot to mention it but "and re-align the transients if the delay is still there". Thanks for taking the time to reply :)

[@marca9955]

They should have named Snapback - Preverb.

[@synth_coven]

If latency is such an issue, just freeze/bounce the tracks with long latency. It's not complicated 😅 Edit: I've been using FL studio for around 7 years, and have never once run into issues regarding latency. Sometimes it does weird stuff with my RAM, but if i close the project and reopen it everything goes back to normal. I can't recommend it enough

[@thank_you_thank_you]

ok will stick with manually layering clicks and pops then...

[@AnimusInvidious]

I would most likely use Reaper if I weren't already so embedded in Ableton.

[@Schaddn]

Oh, I thought this was just to put on after everything is recorded. Why would you use this live? Wait, and why would playback be 1.9s delayed with lookahead?

[@jrtaylor2601]

6:48 this was the main reason I switched

[@nikolaudio]

Hello Dave

[@leonnaffin]

So no latency should be positive with ARA2 support?

[@leonnaffin]

Please ableton allow ARA2 next

[@DanWorrall]

ARA Is really offline processing, so latency isn't really a valid concept. There'll be other limitations however, like having to be the first plugin on the channel, probably won't work on subgroups etc.

[@leonnaffin]

@@DanWorrall ah good to know. But makes total sense how could a ara2 plugin predict what a time based plugin will do. Still amazing that ara2 exists and I really hope it will be implemented to all daw soon

[@FINXainarskrastins]

Ah... latency and automation... tale as old as time

[@davepugh7961]

Hi Dan, if you could answer this then please do. I once watched one of your videos where you said the best doll to use forgive the misspellings and the bad punctuation but I am dictating this into the phone as I walk from the train station. So doll would be Daw anyhow I have been using a certain doll with c and two B's in its name because it's free and I'm very poor even though I should have lots of money by now but it gives me nothing but problems and I try to keep my laptop an old 2016 Windows 10 Joby sway underpowered with an i5 core plenty of ram I guess but the choking Point ends up being the graphics card draws power from the CPU. Would it benefit me to learn to use Reaper and get rid of that other thing? If you take the time to answer this thank you Dave the unpaid unwilling but Wide Awake Now guide

Not Dan, but I'll answer anyway: Try it out. Reaper has a 60 day free trial without limitations. You can learn the basics of Reaper for free and pay the license when you're ready to make the switch.

[@davepugh7961]

Thank you, unnamed person. I downloaded the installer a while ago but never installed it. Do you have to be online and register or activate it? because I try to keep my computer offline for one, for the other answer I was anxious to hear, how CPU hungry it is compared to the competitors? I end up running so many plugins and instruments that I got to freeze everything and then unfreeze a track at a time to make changes. In fact I just found out that if I use all tracks and just route it so that some of my tracks are usef as buses I put my mastering effects and do my summing and volume automation through what I call track buses because some plugins I use eat more cpu power in a bus than they do in a track which is crazy too, With this in mind I also copy clips to new tracks for things such as verbs, delays, parallel compression, anything else that I can to cut down the load by way of freezing I've had to become real creative about it.

[@DanWorrall]

You don't have to be online. Reaper has a reputation for being very CPU efficient, and typically can run more plugins and bigger projects than other DAWs on the same hardware. But try it on your system and see how you get on.

[@davepugh7961]

@DanWorrall I know that as industrious, highly intelligent, and tinkery as you are, you prolly have precious little time for anybody else's humor. However, 1) Thank you for your response, and 2) I hope you don't mind that I literally heard your deadpan, monotonistic voice in my head when I read it 😀.

[@teomage978]

Psichédélique the voice lol

[@suniso370]

6:53 Yeah, what’s the logic behind that!

[@DanWorrall]

I think just: its difficult. Eg you have track A with a plugin with X ms latency, inside a subgroup with a plugin with y ms latency, and also sending to an effect with z ms latency (outside the subgroup): how much correction does track A require? Your head starts to spin a bit, right? In fact there are two correct answers: x+y for the group, and x+z for the send, and your DAW has to do both. So, Reaper is able to keep everything in sync regardless of how complex your routing is (albeit no feedback) because... Justin is clever AF?

[@suniso370]

@ It’s a realistic scenario, I’d have to set it up in both Reaper and Logic and take a look at an oscilloscope because I love testing stuff like that. My gripe with Logic is that they still didn’t fix the bus latency compensation. But I’m primarily using Reaper since version 5 and haven’t looked back.

[@fogvarious2478]

Just go old school .. like in the 90s..bring it back in ressmpled? And as à sideline make a sample pack

[@WillyJunior]

FL Studio handles PDC extremely well

[@KranzjustKranz]

why can't Snapback 'look ahead' ?

[@DanWorrall]

It does. That's why it has latency. If it was an ARA plugin it could 'lookahead' for the entire track and do all the processing in advance. But a conventional plugin only has access to a short window, the length of which depends on it's latency.

[@gravity00x]

does your daw not have timeshift like bitwig? thats a basic feature every daw should have. if it tells u the plugin causes 1.9 seconds of delay, u simply shift the track back by 1.9 seconds. ez. reaper not having something like this is qzite funny when its the frankenstein of daws that every hobby rocket scientist swears by

[@halcyon__r3289]

Woow no bounce tail

[@stelthtenau]

Ableton Live 🙄

[@murat_buyuk]

I don't know how it can NOT be obvious that adding samples BEFORE the actual sound would introduce latency. Then adding a huge long tail hihat and complaining about the snare hitting after 2 seconds, makes me scratch my head.

[@avrahax7714]

Reaper is the solution 😍

[@halcyon__r3289]

Watched not noted

[@Chaos-Dynamics]

Are we still allowed to say that Realer is a great daw, some people will be offended 😂

[@ranajoyshil]

Reaper supremacy.

[@halcyon__r3289]

Oh delay

[@AlessandroRorato]

i've been saying that reaper is the best daw ever since 2012

[@SamHocking]

It's flexible and productive, but it's the Excel Spreadhseet of DAWs and just feels a bit dated imo. Best for sound design, external hardware and in the box work at the moment is Bitwig imo, the workflow and speed to get from idea to it out as audio and moving on to the next ideas is what they are so good at compared to others. I use both though, Reaper supports multichannel, tracking is a bit better too.

[@lastboxofsparklers]

If I'm not misunderstanding your issues here, I think you're specifically talking about PT and S1, in which case it seems odd to literally ask people to switch to the most annoyingly awkward DAW out there.