It’s really frustrating, after spending tons of time mixing and getting close to finishing a session, to discover that there are numerous tracks in your session that are off in their timing as a result of delays caused by plug-ins. As a result of this kind of delay, drum kits can sound sloppy, vocals can lose their expressive timing--everything can start to add up and get really off. So, it’s important to make sure your DAW is compensating channel delays correctly.

In ProTools, this is under Playback Engine where you can choose how much compensation you need. Choose ‘Delay Compensation’ under the Options menu--there should be a check mark next to the option.

To display a Dly indicator at the bottom of each channel in the Mixer window, select ‘Delay Compensation’ under the menu View > Mix Window Views. In the edit window, you’ll see a Dly indicator in the transport at the top.

Dly color indications:
Green = no plugins using compensation
Orange = plugins on channel using x-samples amount of compensation
Red = you need to increase delay compensation for a channel; you're over the limit.

Manually compensate

If you’ve maxed out your delay compensation, you can turn off delay compensation for a single track and manually move the track. To disable a single track, right-click the channel and select “disable delay compensation.”

In your channel Dly indicator, take note of how many samples are being delayed. This is how many samples you need to trim off the front of your track, or else shift earlier.

To Shift:

• Select a clip or region to move.
• Then "alt + H" to bring up the Shift window.
• Enter the amount of samples showing in the channel’s Dly indicator into the sample space of the Shift window.

Do a search for your plug-in to learn how many samples it uses to delay processing.

If you take the manual approach, it’s important to remember that you performed manual delay compensation. Use a track’s comment box to note the exact samples shifted. If you remove one of the plugins on the track you manually adjusted, the overall delay on that track will change, and you'll have to readjust the samples in the Shift window again.

Test

To test delay compensation, you can try bussing the track in question to a new audio track and recording it. After recording, the printed audio of the new track should be in phase with the original track. If you see that your newly bounced track is delayed and looks shifted out of phase, you have delay compensation issues.

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Leave a comment if you have additional Delay Compensation tips.

Here is a helpful video at Paul Maunder's YouTube channel for more reference: