Best Practices / Advice....

[Jeff Scott]

Would like some advice from seasoned / Experienced users...

Ive been trying a variety of Tape Saturation plugins over the past few weeks. I really like the Slate VTM (Virtual Tape Machines) and the Waves Kramer Master Tape for what they do to the tracks. I find myself going back to the Slate VTM more often than not.

However...the Slate VTM seems to cause some random crashing with SAW as well as sometimes the meters stop working though audio passes thru.

I am also starting to suspect there may be issue with the Plugin Latency compensation. The Kramer Tape has about 59 samples worth of latency and VTM about 1620 samples. That's 1.2 ms and 36.73ms at 44.1Khz respectively. I have had some random sync issues show up every now and then....not all the time though.

However...on my latest mix of a song I sense something a little "Off"....when it comes to the tightness of the drums compared to the Rough mix I did without any plugins on it at all. The drums sound great but not as "tight" or locked in with the rest of the tracks. Don't know if it's just my perception or what...Playing around with building a couple of processed tracks to new Sound files I did observe measurable delays being incorporated into the new Sound File tracks when comparing to the original track. It seemed to be intermmitant however...that's why I questioned SAW's Latency compensation. In reading old posts it seems that some Plugins may report their latency inaccurately, thereby throwing off the accuracy of SAW's latency compensation.

So ...first question is this...would it be an acceptable practice to "print" individual tracks with the tape saturation plugins on them and then move forward with the mixing as per usual? In other words....take a raw track...apply an instance of the VTM plugin in the Pre FX slot...and then build that track to a new Sound file, and then use that new Saturated track as my working track? I would of course check it against the original Raw track to make sure everything lined up.

Or should I go through the process of checking every instance...creating a new Soundfile and making sure the tracks line up and that SAW's latency compensation is working correctly?

The other option is to forgo the Slate VTM....but it really does sound good

Any advice or observations would be appreciated.

[Dave Labrecque]

Would like some advice from seasoned / Experienced users...

Ive been trying a variety of Tape Saturation plugins over the past few weeks. I really like the Slate VTM (Virtual Tape Machines) and the Waves Kramer Master Tape for what they do to the tracks. I find myself going back to the Slate VTM more often than not.

However...the Slate VTM seems to cause some random crashing with SAW as well as sometimes the meters stop working though audio passes thru.

I am also starting to suspect there may be issue with the Plugin Latency compensation. The Kramer Tape has about 59 samples worth of latency and VTM about 1620 samples. That's 1.2 ms and 36.73ms at 44.1Khz respectively. I have had some random sync issues show up every now and then....not all the time though.

However...on my latest mix of a song I sense something a little "Off"....when it comes to the tightness of the drums compared to the Rough mix I did without any plugins on it at all. The drums sound great but not as "tight" or locked in with the rest of the tracks. Don't know if it's just my perception or what...Playing around with building a couple of processed tracks to new Sound files I did observe measurable delays being incorporated into the new Sound File tracks when comparing to the original track. It seemed to be intermmitant however...that's why I questioned SAW's Latency compensation. In reading old posts it seems that some Plugins may report their latency inaccurately, thereby throwing off the accuracy of SAW's latency compensation.

So ...first question is this...would it be an acceptable practice to "print" individual tracks with the tape saturation plugins on them and then move forward with the mixing as per usual? In other words....take a raw track...apply an instance of the VTM plugin in the Pre FX slot...and then build that track to a new Sound file, and then use that new Saturated track as my working track? I would of course check it against the original Raw track to make sure everything lined up.

Or should I go through the process of checking every instance...creating a new Soundfile and making sure the tracks line up and that SAW's latency compensation is working correctly?

The other option is to forgo the Slate VTM....but it really does sound good

Any advice or observations would be appreciated.

I guess it comes down to convenience. Which approach do you prefer? Either would work, assuming you get a properly-latency-compensated track in the build-mix fairly often.

I would check the track that you think "feels" suspect to see if it's right or wrong. Have you done that? If you can ge a handle on when or how often it's wrong, that could help you decide which way to go.

Printing to an adjacent track (and slipping as may be necessary) isn't a horrible work-around. Just a bit of a pain -- especially if you're doing it on several tracks. To keep the session clean and organized, it might be helpful to do the print to a different layer of the same track. Or at least move it there after the build/slip.

[Bob L]

You could build the mix without the suspect plugin, then place that mix wav file back in a clean edl... add the saturation plugin and build the mix again... this way... no matter what latency issues there may be, the mix will remain perfectly synced.

Bob L

[UpTilDawn]

... However...on my latest mix of a song I sense something a little "Off"....when it comes to the tightness of the drums compared to the Rough mix I did without any plugins on it at all. The drums sound great but not as "tight" or locked in with the rest of the tracks. Don't know if it's just my perception or what...Playing around with building a couple of processed tracks to new Sound files I did observe measurable delays being incorporated into the new Sound File tracks when comparing to the original track. It seemed to be intermmitant however...that's why I questioned SAW's Latency compensation. In reading old posts it seems that some Plugins may report their latency inaccurately, thereby throwing off the accuracy of SAW's latency compensation.

So ...first question is this...would it be an acceptable practice to "print" individual tracks with the tape saturation plugins on them and then move forward with the mixing as per usual? In other words....take a raw track...apply an instance of the VTM plugin in the Pre FX slot...and then build that track to a new Sound file, and then use that new Saturated track as my working track? I would of course check it against the original Raw track to make sure everything lined up.

Or should I go through the process of checking every instance...creating a new Soundfile and making sure the tracks line up and that SAW's latency compensation is working correctly?

The other option is to forgo the Slate VTM....but it really does sound good

Any advice or observations would be appreciated.

Seems to me that old versions of Drumagog used to do that..... being a little bit out of sync and requiring realignment...

Anyway, I just wanted to suggest that rather than build mix to a new soundfile (and then importing that into SAW, as it sounds as though you are implying), that it would be far easier to build mix to current hot track (or as Dave suggests, to a different layer on the same hot track), then to build mix to new soundfile... just in case that's what you meant.

[Bob L]

Either way works... my suggestion to open the mix in a blank edl guarentees that nothing from the full session is carried over in the final mix with the plugin... certain stuff from the original may need to be bypassed so not to apply it twice.

Bob L