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April 23, 2021

Manage Latency Like A Pro – Low Latency Mode Workarounds For Your Huge Projects

 

As your songs and Projects evolve, you may find yourself in deeper waters than you expected. That one tiny riff or tune may have exploded into 100+ tracks, instruments, plugins, and routing.

And maybe, just maybe, you needed to fit in another pass of that vocal or guitar riff. All good, right? Change Logic’s Buffer Size to your usual setting for recording. And press record…

But! With such a big Project, you may find your Mac isn’t as happy to record another take. In fact, System Overloads may make it impossible to record anything else.

What do you do? You can’t reduce the Buffer Size without System Overloads. But without the smaller Buffer Size, all you get is latency when you try to record.

Well, thankfully Logic Pro offers a way through this mess. And that’s Low Latency Mode.

When you enable Low Latency Mode, Logic temporarily disables all plugins and routing that is introducing Latency to your Project. Which allows you to record latency-free. It’s really a crucial feature both recording audio and MIDI.

But…

For Low Latency Mode to help you, some compromises have to be made. And those compromises can sometimes be more of a problem than a solution.

Most notorious is the fact that Low Latency Mode can disrupt the levels of your Project. The track you’re recording to might have a sudden drop in volume. Or the Stereo Output might get all screwy. Which can shake up the vibe of your Project.

Low Latency Mode can also completely remove Aux Channels used for reverbs, delays, or anything else. And how do you help your vocalist feel solid in the mix without even a tiny bit of reverb?

Here’s the thing though – there are workarounds to the Low Latency Mode blues. I swear!

First, you could try adjusting the threshold for when Low Latency Mode bypasses things. By default Low Latency Mode bypasses any plugins that add more than 5 ms of latency. But you can change it if you need to.

There’s also Low Latency Safe mode for Sends and Aux Channels. Which lets you tell Logic, “Hey! Don’t turn off this reverb send please.”

And if you need a solution for gain-staging problems caused by Low Latency Mode, then you should check out today’s video.

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Filed Under: MIDI, Preferences & Settings, Producing, Project Management, Recording, Workflow

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Comments

  1. Bob says

    April 23, 2021 at 12:28 pm

    I haven’t tried low latency mode, but may consider it now. My typical approach is to freeze a lot of tracks (maybe even everything but the one that’s record enabled) so that they’re not using as much system resources. How would you contrast that approach with low latency mode?

    Reply
    • Tom Haynes says

      April 23, 2021 at 8:39 pm

      Hi Bob,
      I’m a fan of Chris and WLPR help. I, like yourself, also freeze my tracks. I’ve been doing it since Logic 9 when I didn’t know of, or understand low latency mode. My 2015 MB pro with 16GB RAM is getting a little old and now I freeze tracks as standard practice. If I need to record guitar or vocals and the latency is driving me crazy I drop the audio pref. settings to 128 or 64 as Chris showed in the video.
      I make sure to reset the audio pref to 1024 for mix or master.

      Reply
  2. Jojo says

    April 23, 2021 at 1:00 pm

    I rarely, to never, respond/comment on quick tutorial videos. But this video is gold. Thank you for the concise and practical tips that go beyond the average ones regurgitated everywhere!

    Reply
  3. Bigga Bigga P says

    April 27, 2021 at 5:40 pm

    Freeze em and all is GREAT :O) Been doing this forever and have gotten through numerous sessions. Also using the live apollo interface has been a life-changer.
    Finally removed SUM amp processing until the mix is done – then saturate to taste :O) Chris, you are amazing though for smaller projects I will deploy that submix hack for sure!!!

    Reply
  4. Randy says

    May 29, 2021 at 5:10 pm

    Nothings ever worked for me. I get pops and crap no matter what with only one instrument track and nothing else just to begin with. Then add more tracks and its impossible, becomes exponentially worse and wont play anymore. What is wrong with my computer? I have 2017 MacBook Pro. is it simply unable to keep up with plugins for the guitar? eh. Nothing ever works.

    Reply
    • ranbob says

      May 29, 2021 at 5:12 pm

      meanwhile there are issues with everything… why do I get volume from my guitar when the nob is down and then I increase it it adds more sound to it. it should have no volume when the nob is down to zero. Why why why … if you knew the context of everything I tried… I need an expert.

      Reply

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