FabFilter

I've been running into an issue with latency not accurately reporting in LPX with all FabFilter plugins. Of course, I have latency compensation set to "all" in LPX settings, and this seems to be an issue only with FabFilter plugins. This has been making any parallel processing or bus processing useless in a mixing environment, and so far I've wasted hours trying to troubleshoot.

Here's an example in action. www.dropbox.com/s/ez6pqg4mu56uox7/lpx-latency.mov?dl=0

You can hear the LFO tool triggering the sidechain at a different point depending on which FabFilter plugins used. This is even the case when Pro-MB is set to Dynamic Phase and Pro-L2 is set to "transparent" with True Peak Limiting off, though the latency is not as bad. Regardless, LPX is not compensating for it. Also, for the issue to be corrected, the plugins must be removed from the channels completely - simply bypassing won't do the trick.

System info:
Super powerful iMac (32gb RAM, 4-core Intel i7 3.4ghz)
LPX 10.4.2

Hi Jesse,

There is a known problem in Logic Pro X when using the sidechain input on plug-ins with latency: the sidechain latency will be compensated incorrectly in this case. Is this what you're running into?

Please report it to Apple -- the more people report it, the more likely they are to fix it.

Cheers,

Actually, this is happening without any sidechain inputs on the affected tracks or busses.

VST Kick Drum routed to Kick Buss w/ Pro-MB
VST Bass routed to Bass Buss w/ Pro-MB & Pro-L.
Bass Buss is sidechained using LFO Tool; no sidechain inputs feeding any of the Pro-MB or Pro-L instances.

But it DOES get worse if I use even LPX's compressor w/ sidechain anywhere on the bass buss.

Hi Jesse,

Can you make a simple test project and email it to us at info@fabfilter.com so we can look into it more closely?

Cheers,

Hi, has this been resolved?

I've been trying to master stems via a reference track as a sidechain, the limiter shows reduction but doesn't seem to apply it i.e the output on the 'limited' track gets to +3 db where as if applied directly through the master bus then is -1. Is there a way round this? it was a huge reason for getting the fabfilter plugins.

Hi Mat,

This is a know issue/bug in Logic Pro X (confirmed to us by Apply). The side-chain input is fed to the plug-in with a delay (equal to the latency), while it SHOULD just be aligned with the normal audio input of course. So at the moment, this makes it impossible to use stem mastering in Logic Pro X unfortunately...

Hi, thanks for confirming. i wish i knew about this before buying it. In the reviews it doesn't mention any issues. I've spent countless hours trying to get around this.. What is the solution? you should take the feature off the info for the plug ins if you can't resolve and i'll have to find another way to master my stems.. i've tried the same in pro tools and had the same issue. It's not that there is a delay, just that the signal goes over 0.00 even though it's showing a reduction on the plug in according the the sidechain input.. So what DAW does it actually work in? i'll have to use that if i want to use this feature? Tell me what i should write to apple about in the words they'll respond to... this is very frustrating! Like i said, this was the MAIN reason i got these fabfilter plugins...

For some mystical reason there are demo versions available for all FF plugins. Maybe to test them for system compatibility and features before buying them!? ;-)

Anyways I just tested it in FL20 on Win and the stem limiting works fine as expected.

Though I can confirm that the VU meter in each instance with activated sidechain shows values above 0 (or whatever the set output gain is) even with constant gain reduction. Seems like the VU doesn't take the gain reduction into account then / is not the output gain? Since the final stem output is nicely limited, this is a pure graphical issue, but very irritating.

Hi all, sorry, I've been on the road for a while and haven't been keeping up with this topic. Yes, the problem persists. And if I bounce something in place with an instance of, say, Pro-Q in natural phase mode, the resulting audio file is temporally shifted late, not accounting for the latency introduced by the plugin.

Not pointing fingers here. Just curious. Is there any estimation of when Apple and FabFilter will be properly these calculating buss (and in some cases, individual channel) latency times?

Thanks again.

We've reported the problem to Apple some time ago already, but it hasn't been fixed yet. It's a good idea to report the bug yourself via bugreporter.apple.com because bugs with more reports get a higher priority.

All we can suggest for now is to use another host for stem mastering.

Cheers,

Thanks for your help Frederik!

I'm actually not using FabFilter for stem mastering. This issue happens with normal producing and mixing projects.

This is such a disaster. For me it effectively shelfs Logic next to garageband and other toys instead of being used as a serious worktool.

It's widely reported:

www.gearslutz.com/board/apple-logic-pro/1295909-serious-old-bug-broken-pdc-completely-ignored-apple-logic-x-programmers.html

www.logicprohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=135038

Please keep reporting to apple to fix it:
www.apple.com/feedback/logic-pro.html

Yea, it's disappointing that this continues with the new version of Logic also. I've had to quit using FabFilter plugins on channels and busses until I can stem out an entire project and work only with individual audio tracks to carefully phase-align. And then I can't add other plugins as they will shift the timing on a FabFilter sidechain. I'm still skeptical that this is an issue with Logic. Isn't it up to FabFilter to tell Logic how many samples it needs to compensate for?

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