“Compensate for Bus-Fed Plug-Ins to Mains & Matrixes” sorts out an interesting problem. The most common use of a bus-fed plugin would be reverb and delay. Let’s use an example to lay this out. My lead microphone channel may have an aux send routed straight into a reverb, with that reverb returning on a stereo channel. In this example, the lead is going to the mains, the reverb return is going to the mains, but the reverb return has added latency that you can clearly hear if you bypass the reverb plugin. For the most part, engineers aren’t too worried about a bit of latency in reverbs or delays because the pre-delay control in reverbs purposefully adds delay anyway. But with other effects like pitch, chorusing, saturation, or overdrive, latency really does matter. This compensation option will ensure that the effect return and the original signal in are in perfect time-alignment with one another.
“Align all Matrixes” is an option that will ensure that the outputs of every Matrix are perfectly aligned with one another. This is particularly relevant in scenarios where matrixes may be fed by differing sources, but the output time for each needs to be in phase and time-aligned. For example, you can drive the PA from a matrix that is sourced by the Mains, and drive the subs from a matrix sourced from an Aux. In previous versions of VENUE, adding plugins to the mains or matrix used for main PA would add some latency to the mains, but the sub aux send would no longer be in-time with the mains. The “Align all Matrixes” option solves that issue and aligns all of the matrixes to the longest path.
“Align Total Delay on Input Strips” is similar to the “Align All Inputs” function of ADC, but should generally not be used at the same time. The biggest different between this functionality and “Align All Inputs” is that it only affects channels that have been Attentioned, and does NOT align ALL inputs. Monitor engineers are always trying to reduce total latency, especially out to IEMs. In the monitor engineer workflow, it’s not always beneficial to delay all of the inputs to the input with the most plugins, but it can still be incredibly useful to align a few, such as multiple inputs from Bass, or multiple microphones on a guitar rig. This delay alignment uses the “User Delay” encoder on the channels to input delay time, which means you can see the delay that has been applied. Just Multi-Attention a few channels that you wish to align, right click (or long touch), and hit “Align Total Delay on Input Strips.” The system will find the attentioned input that has the longest total plugin latency, and will calculate and apply the appropriate amount of delay to the attentioned channels to align them with the latest channel. It’s a one-shot action, and calculates the delay at the time you hit the button.
