Does FLStudio have PDC?

[bmanic]

Umm.. as far as I know the 'live' thing with fruity came mostly in version 4, so from the start is has most definately been a composition tool mainly aimed at loop based music. So frakly, I have no idea why you keep insisting it is a live app that needs no PDC.

Anyhow, PDC is doable, and fruity's routing while quite revolutionary and flexible at the time it was introduced is now common in quite a few apps and even taken further (samplitude). Also just to give one more example, Logic on mac has full PDC with extremely flexible routing and sends etc.

Digidesign were quite reluctant to do PDC and gave all kinds of reasons why it's not needed and how difficult it is to implement but guess what? Now that they've done it they suddenly praise it and version 6.4 even ships with demos of WHY full pdc is so much better for your music..

Still, just gimme PDC on the master out, pretty please Gol

Cheers!
bManic

[tony tony chopper]

why it's not needed

It IS needed, but at the same time, people try to avoid latency at all costs, so it's more up to plugins to avoid adding a latency to the signal flow. The few plugins that absolutely need to (mostly FFT-based ones) could be avoided, they all have zero-latency counterparts. Compressors may add a little latency, but it can be neglectable in most cases.
Sure, people like convolution reverbs, but not only they suck way too much cpu, they can also add a very noticable latency. Might not be too annoying for composing on-screen, but not usable live.

and how difficult it is to implement

basically it only means adding a delay line to each track but the one that introduces latency. That's easy, but then you have to deal with track routing and sends. In some cases, it's just theorically impossible. So a *full* latency compensation in FL is just not doable, logically.

[tony tony chopper]

-it would be a lot of work to implement that I dont really want to bother with

you know, at some point it will be overhyped and FL will have it. It won't have it fully working, since as I'm saying it's not logically doable. But since people barely need it, no one will notice. Hey you didn't notice in other hosts, so..

-in some cases, I might not even have an idea on how to implement it

if you have, tell me

Umm, so Magix, Steinberg, Emagic and Digidesign are magicians?

no, but you didn't test them far enough to realize it doesn't always work

[spaceman]

if I wanted my music precise up to 99.9999999999% I'd only use one-ping-only

can you imagine an orchestra playing, all in perfect sync?.. weird

I like my music natural and nothing in nature is in perfect sync

[pitchdrifter]

why it's not needed

It IS needed, but at the same time, people try to avoid latency at all costs, so it's more up to plugins to avoid adding a latency to the signal flow. The few plugins that absolutely need to (mostly FFT-based ones) could be avoided, they all have zero-latency counterparts. Compressors may add a little latency, but it can be neglectable in most cases.
Sure, people like convolution reverbs, but not only they suck way too much cpu, they can also add a very noticable latency. Might not be too annoying for composing on-screen, but not usable live.

and how difficult it is to implement

basically it only means adding a delay line to each track but the one that introduces latency. That's easy, but then you have to deal with track routing and sends. In some cases, it's just theorically impossible. So a *full* latency compensation in FL is just not doable, logically.

[VitaminD]

hmmmm you like your kickdrum a second or more out of time from the bassline and the whole thing half a second out of time with the lead?

yeah that sounds VERY natural..

[spaceman]

hmmmm you like your kickdrum a second or more out of time from the bassline and the whole thing half a second out of time with the lead?

yeah that sounds VERY natural..

that's some latency you've got there

why should anything be a second out of sync? do you record your tracks live in real time

no.. I bounce my tracks and roughly, manually put them back in sync.. not 1/1000000 sec precise but precise enough

[Jaeson Merrill]

perhaps then there could be implemented a pdc that works as best as possible, like samplitude (which has sends and routing just like FL) and then you could also add a switch on the mixer to turn it off and on (like samplitude)

[Rik]

FL has a very flexible mixer routing system and there is indeed a logical problem implementing PDC.

If you'd like to have an excersize in logic - simply posed problem is:

In FL you can route one buss into another buss, while having both of them using same send.

Delay that.

Sonar 3 does that. Sonar has had latency compensation since Cakewalk 9... I think it is "by default" with directX. I would definitely need it in FL to do sample accurate bounces.

Erik.

[tony tony chopper]

"by default" with directX

DX plugins indeed allow latency compensation, but it's in fact more the way DX plugins are processed that make latency compensation unneeded for them (and in a way, that's why some of them don't work in FL or other hosts than Sonar). It's totally different, in fact better than VST's, but you know like me that DX filters kinda failed (as usual with recent microsoft stuff, it's well thought, fully expandable, but too complex and there hadn't been enough simple examples).

[Tronam]

I think that the people most likely to be affected by a complete lack of PDC in FL Studio are the ones running DSP cards like UAD-1 and TC PowerCore. The only other kinds of plug-ins that I typically see which produce noticable amounts of latency are convolution reverbs and lookahead compressors/limiters. While a large portion of the FL Studio community may not care about PDC, I'm sure that many users would greatly appreciate it or not even realize what they were missing. Perhaps it could be a feature, like in Cubase SX2, which could be toggled on or off and if certain router configurations are impossible to compensate for, perhaps enabling PDC would limit some of those routing possibilities. Would latency compensation for track Inserts and aux/sends which were forced out to the master bus be possible? While others may desire exotic signal routing, I would be willing to sacrifice that flexibility and embrace a more traditional signal flow in FL Studio if my UAD-1 could be compensated for on the inserts and send buses.

-Tronam

[ericj23]

does SX allow you to create a group-buss and then route it to the same send as the component busses at the same time? And most importantly (if it does allow that) - does PDC actually and verifyable works in this case? Please verify before you say that it does - because it doesn't take alot to talk shiot on forums, but it's another subject to actually stand behind your words (right Xander?).

cubase does this

you can send to group from a number of channels - and send all the inputs and the group to the same send fx

you can if you want then send a portion of the first group to another one, which is also connected to the original send

in fact i just did it with 3 groups

[ericj23]

and tronam is bang on - the reason i gave logic the dodge is its lack of pdc when working with my powercore( notice to however said logic has pdc - it only has it on the first channel on any vsti and on the audio channels - not on group or send channels)

[Jaeson Merrill]

Perhaps it could be a feature, like in Cubase SX2, which could be toggled on or off and if certain router configurations are impossible to compensate for, perhaps enabling PDC would limit some of those routing possibilities.
-Tronam

i think i just said something like this.

theres 2 people with the same idea!!!

come on gol

[valley]

does SX allow you to create a group-buss and then route it to the same send as the component busses at the same time? And most importantly (if it does allow that) - does PDC actually and verifyable works in this case? Please verify before you say that it does - because it doesn't take alot to talk shiot on forums, but it's another subject to actually stand behind your words (right Xander?).

cubase does this

Does SX do the bussing pre or post send? Mirabebe didn't make clear exactly what his criteria was. Latency comp for pre-send bussing is a doddle[1], but post fade whilst programmatically possible does not yield quite the results one might expect.

I can't actually think of any useful reasons for doing post-send bussing to another channel on a given buss group, but since pre-send is reasonably easy to visualise, I have to assume Mirabebe meant the latter.

[1] for varying values of 'doddle'. PDC could very well be highly tricky to incorporate into an established audio engine.