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.