Specifications

Pro Tools|HD Getting Started Guide84
However, larger sessions with higher track and
voice counts, many plug-ins, and/or complex
mixer routing can benefit when DSP-induced
delays are compensated to maintain phase co-
herent time alignment.
In any session, if you want to maintain absolute
time alignment across all tracks you should al-
ways compensate for signal processing delays.
Delay Compensation should be enabled during
playback and mixing so that all tracks’ outputs
are correctly time-aligned.
When recording, Delay Compensation should
usually be turned off (see “Low Latency Moni-
toring During Recording” on page 85).
Automatically Compensating
for Delays
Pro Tools can automatically calculate and com-
pensate for processing delays by using the
Pro Tools Delay Compensation feature.
Delay Compensation
Pro Tools provides Delay Compensation for
managing DSP delays from plug-in and hard-
ware inserts, and mixer routing (bussing). With
Delay Compensation enabled, Pro Tools main-
tains phase coherent time alignment between
tracks that have plug-ins with differing DSP de-
lays, tracks with different mixing paths, tracks
that are split off and recombined within the
mixer, and tracks with hardware inserts.
To maintain phase coherent time alignment,
Delay Compensation should be enabled during
playback and mixing.
To use Delay Compensation to compensate for
DSP-induced delays:
1 Choose Setup > Playback Engine, and select a
Delay Compensation setting (see “Delay Com-
pensation Engine” on page 41).
2 Select View > Mix Window > Delay Compensation
to display Delay Compensation indicators and
fields for each track in the Mixer window.
3 Select Options > Delay Compensation to enable
Delay Compensation.
4 Do any of the following, as needed:
• Define specific delay values for hardware
inserts (in the I/O Setup dialog)
• Bypass Delay Compensation per track (in
the Mixer window)
• Fine-tune Delay Compensation for each
track by entering a User Offset (in the
Mixer window)
To disable Delay Compensation on all tracks:
 Deselect Options > Delay Compensation.
Channel Delay Indicator
On all systems, the Channel Delay indicator
(dly) in the Mix window displays the total delay,
in samples, incurred on the track from the use of
any plug-ins or hardware inserts on that chan-
nel.
For more information on using Delay Com-
pensation controls, see the Pro Tools Refer-
ence Guide.
For more information on delay indication
when using Delay Compensation, see the
Pro Tools Reference Guide.