Setup guide

Pro Tools|HD Setup Guide90
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 93).
Using Delay Compensation
Pro Tools provides automatic Delay Compensa-
tion for managing DSP delays from plug-in and
hardware inserts, and mixer routing (bussing
and sends). With Delay Compensation enabled,
Pro Tools maintains phase coherent time align-
ment between tracks that have plug-ins with dif-
fering DSP delays, tracks with different mixing
paths, tracks that are split off and recombined
within the mixer, and tracks with hardware in-
serts.
To maintain phase coherent time alignment,
Delay Compensation should always be enabled
during playback and mixing. Delay Compensa-
tion should also be used in most recording situ-
ations.
Enabling Delay Compensation
To enable Delay Compensation:
 Select Options > Delay Compensation.
When Delay Compensation is enabled, the De-
lay Compensation status indicator in the Edit
Window Toolbar is displayed.
If desired, the Delay Compensation View for
tracks can be displayed in the Mix Window (see
“Delay Compensation View” on page 91).
Configuring Delay Compensation
Engine
The amount of Delay Compensation available
for your session is set in the Playback Engine.
The total amount of delay due to inserts and
mixer routing for the entire session is displayed
in the Session Setup window.
There are three settings in the Playback Engine
dialog to dedicate DSP resources for Delay Com-
pensation:
None Allocates no DSP resources for Delay Com-
pensation.
Short Allocates minimum DSP resources of De-
lay Compensation for each channel. This is the
most efficient setting for Pro Tools|HD Accel
systems. For sessions with only a few plug-ins
that do not induce too much DSP-based delay,
this setting should be sufficient.
Long Allocates maximum DSP resources for De-
lay Compensation for each mixer channel. For
sessions with a lot of plug-ins resulting in a large
amount of DSP-induced delay, select this set-
ting.
Delay Compensation indicator