weird send fx behaviour

[JRIII86]

Hoping someone can clear something up for me. I have a flanger plugin (fix flanger, to be specific) set up as a send effect on a drum track. Whenever the send button is turned on there's a delayed doubling of the track which is very noticeable, and it doesn't seem to matter what settings I have on the plugin itself. Also, the doubled track is still there even if I hit "bypass" on the plugin, which confuses me, because even if there's something I'm not understanding about how the plugin works, shouldn't the problem go away if the plugin is being bypassed? It only goes away if I turn off the send button on the mixer or I turn the send's level all the way down in the mixer, or if I switch the plugin to "off".
I did find this paragraph in the flanger's manual:

"Since the Fix Flanger can delay the signal with negative delay times, the dry signal passing through the plug-in will always have a 50 millisecond latency (look-ahead) which makes it less suitable for using live. However, Fix Flanger will always work well as post-recording treatment, and all major DAWs will automatically correct this latency."

I'll also add that the problem is not there if I use it as an insert effect, so I'm guessing the problem is something to do with the unprocessed signal being played alongside the latency-affected one when the plugin's used as a send, but seeking clarification. I suppose I may be confused about the nature of "bypass".
Thanks, and I apologize if this belongs in the VST forum but thought I'd try here first.

[Carly(Poohbear)]

From what you have stated there, I would say bypassed or not the signal will be delayed due to the nature of the device.

Out of interest have you tried it with DC turned on?

What about using a parallel channel for the wet signal?
(Now in the old days before DC with parallel channels, ways around this sort of thing is to either put the device on the dry and wet signal but of course on the dry have it in bypass mode. The other way is to balance the signal with the "now free" VMG-01 RE.)

[selig]

Hoping someone can clear something up for me. I have a flanger plugin (fix flanger, to be specific) set up as a send effect on a drum track. Whenever the send button is turned on there's a delayed doubling of the track which is very noticeable, and it doesn't seem to matter what settings I have on the plugin itself. Also, the doubled track is still there even if I hit "bypass" on the plugin, which confuses me, because even if there's something I'm not understanding about how the plugin works, shouldn't the problem go away if the plugin is being bypassed? It only goes away if I turn off the send button on the mixer or I turn the send's level all the way down in the mixer, or if I switch the plugin to "off".
I did find this paragraph in the flanger's manual:

"Since the Fix Flanger can delay the signal with negative delay times, the dry signal passing through the plug-in will always have a 50 millisecond latency (look-ahead) which makes it less suitable for using live. However, Fix Flanger will always work well as post-recording treatment, and all major DAWs will automatically correct this latency."

I'll also add that the problem is not there if I use it as an insert effect, so I'm guessing the problem is something to do with the unprocessed signal being played alongside the latency-affected one when the plugin's used as a send, but seeking clarification. I suppose I may be confused about the nature of "bypass".
Thanks, and I apologize if this belongs in the VST forum but thought I'd try here first.

I'm guessing Reason isn't compensating for this VST, which causes the 50ms doubling you're hearing. You'll need over 2 million samples of delay, and I don't think Reason's delay compensation buffer is this big…

The problem is still there when using as an insert, sort of. When used as an insert the ENTIRE signal is 50ms behind. You'll have to "advance" the track by 50ms to compensate manually for any individual track you want to use this on.

As for the nature of bypass, many plugins keep their latency (delay) when bypassed and that's why you still hear the delay even when bypassed. The reason for this is IF it is compensated, then bypassing it without the 50ms delay would "break" the compensation or cause the entire system's compensation to have to be re-calculated (glitch city). This way you can bypass as the track plays (using automation, for example) and not cause any glitches. Make sense?

This is a great flanger, btw, got a demo from Paul himself at AES a few years ago!

And not that it's up to Paul's level, I created a similar "through zero" flanger patch for the FSB a few years back with only 1ms latency. If you're interested it's here: FSB, Combinator Patches, Effects Device Patches, Modulation, Flanger-Phaser, "Through Zero Flanger".

[JRIII86]

As for the nature of bypass, many plugins keep their latency (delay) when bypassed and that's why you still hear the delay even when bypassed. The reason for this is IF it is compensated, then bypassing it without the 50ms delay would "break" the compensation or cause the entire system's compensation to have to be re-calculated (glitch city). This way you can bypass as the track plays (using automation, for example) and not cause any glitches. Make sense?

I think so. It's still a bit confusing to me, but are you saying it is that way so that you can switch between "on" and "bypass" more smoothly within a track?
This issue seems to have exposed the difference between "off" and "bypass" to me, which I was never really aware of before. I assumed there must be some difference, otherwise there wouldn't be two different settings, but for all intents and purposes I've had in the past they both seemed to do the same thing. This is the first time they haven't for me.

I read great reviews about this flanger but so far I haven't really gotten the sound I'm looking for. I got closer with the Waves Metaflanger.
Also, is there a way of getting around this huge latency without manually moving the track ahead? The flanger's manual said that the major DAWs would compensate for this. Does Reason not do that?

And thanks for the suggestion about your flanger patch! I'll give it a try. I've never really delved into the included Combi patches.

[selig]

As for the nature of bypass, many plugins keep their latency (delay) when bypassed and that's why you still hear the delay even when bypassed. The reason for this is IF it is compensated, then bypassing it without the 50ms delay would "break" the compensation or cause the entire system's compensation to have to be re-calculated (glitch city). This way you can bypass as the track plays (using automation, for example) and not cause any glitches. Make sense?

I think so. It's still a bit confusing to me, but are you saying it is that way so that you can switch between "on" and "bypass" more smoothly within a track?
This issue seems to have exposed the difference between "off" and "bypass" to me, which I was never really aware of before. I assumed there must be some difference, otherwise there wouldn't be two different settings, but for all intents and purposes I've had in the past they both seemed to do the same thing. This is the first time they haven't for me.

I read great reviews about this flanger but so far I haven't really gotten the sound I'm looking for. I got closer with the Waves Metaflanger.
Also, is there a way of getting around this huge latency without manually moving the track ahead? The flanger's manual said that the major DAWs would compensate for this. Does Reason not do that?

And thanks for the suggestion about your flanger patch! I'll give it a try. I've never really delved into the included Combi patches.

Difference between “Off” and “Bypass”:
Bypass will pass the dry signal through the device, Off will mute the signal entirely.

As for the delay - this flanger is designed to work more as an insert effect than a send effect. For it to work as a send effect, the DAW would have to somehow delay all the tracks which are sending to this effect by 50 ms to match the return, which would of course cause problems with any other send effect from that same channel. In other words, it won’t work!

I didn’t see any way to remove the latency and just keep the short delay used for the flanger effect, which would help it to work as a send effect.

I forgot to ask if you noticed what the reported delay was when using it as an insert on a channel? Should be 2.2 million samples for it to work right, and I’m just not sure Reason has this large of a delay compensation buffer. Other DAWs allow you to adjust the buffer size for delay compensation to account for larger latencies like this. For comparison, many devices that DO have latency have a handful of samples of delay (not over 2 million) or a few milliseconds.


Sent from some crappy device using Tapatalk

[JRIII86]

So am I to understand that the only way to use this flanger -- even if I use it as an insert -- is to move the entire track I have it on ahead by 50ms? I only want the effect for the drums for two bars of the song, but if I have it on bypass for the rest of it the delay is still there so the drums are out of time with everything else. And is it even possible to measure a track displacement in ms? It looks to me like you can only measure it using the "position" numbers in the sequencer.