Precision Multiband creating phantom starts on bassline-HELP

[blhowardiii]

I've been working on mixing an LP in my studio and I've been struggling to get the upright bass to work well in the mix. After some constructive advice from a mastering engineer who heard a track I tried out UA's Precision Multiband on the Upright track (not a buss) and things really fell into place sonically and this plug is getting used on almost every upright bass track now.

The problem is that on several repeated instances while doing crital listening to the mixes today there's a phantom start to the bass sections that start before audio is even reached... That is to say that if the bass starts at the beginning of the song, some random selection of bass will play before the actual start of the bass for some reason. This has only started since using the Precision Multiband.

I have 3 x UAD-1e cards in a Mac Quad 2.66 with 4 gigs of RAM, 7200 RPM drives and running the most current version of OS X and also Logic Pro. Plug-in delay compensation is config'd for \"all.

\"The sessions are close to wrapping up in literally a couple of days and all of a sudden I can't reliably get bounces out of my system to save my life.

Work-around-wise I've tried the following:

1) Freeze the Upright bass track to get the Precision Multiband disabled and off the card - The frozen track seems to inherit the phantom notes and they are played as before.

2) Solo all other instruments and bounce to reduce any CPU strain. No difference.

3) Ensure that as many tracks as possible are frozen to reduce strain on UAD cards - Done and I've gotten several of the tracks down to 20% or so and the problem is still happening.

I'm guessing that the Precision Multiband does some sort of pre-reading of the audio that's coming up and perhaps this is some sort of artifact of this process, but I'm totally uncertain of how to deal with it. I don't see any options for config'ing any sort of pre-play scanning of the material it's going to compress.

In addition to the above headaches, I'm also trying to suss out some phantom clicks that the UAD plugs seem to be causing for some reason. Randomly, this click keeps happening before the start of a specific vocal track and stops if I mute the track or disable the UAD plugs. Again, this is with relatively low strain on the 3 cards.

These things are completely random and unpredictable which is totally unworkable in a session... Major stress.

If anyone's dealt with this before, specifically the Precision Multiband issue, I'd love to hear suggestions.

Many thanks-

Lee

 

[blhowardiii]

Interesting findings.

It seems as though after making the disk buffer size \"large\" in Logic the bass pre-playing has stopped.

Re: the clicks before certain audio tracks play, it seems those happen when those audio tracks have UAD plugs on them and the song is rolling towards the start of the audio files. The UAD's CPU jumps up right before the audio starts and a pop often accompanies it.

My work around was to extend the start of the audio files out before the actual audio starts in hopes of getting the UAD's CPU prepped for the plug to be used on that track and hopefully causing the pops to happen before the start of the song where they can be edited out more easily.

Is there some way to get the UAD \"expecting\" the use of it's resources before it gets to the audio. I can certainly see the CPU saving benefits of only using the UAD CPU when a certain tracks calls for it, but not at the expense of knowing I'm going to get a good bounce...

Thanks-

 

[blhowardiii]

Evidently the buffer setting didn't solve the problem. I was able to use the same trick I described above re: the clicks with the bass though and that seemed to work around the problem...

Anyone else experienced this?

I'll also add I'm using an Apogee Ensemble with current drivers and firmware and was also able to duplicate these problems using my RME FF800 as well.

 

[HKC]

Have you tried just putting a little sound snip of the bass ahead of the mix. Then after bouncing just cut it out. I have never had this problem with UAD1 but my Powercore always makes a small click before the first time it´s activated. After that click everything works fine. It´s a little annoying but really no big deal once you figured out thow to get rid of it.

 

[TheHopiWay]

oops

 

[TheHopiWay]

I've had similar problems in the past and simply added a sound file of digital silence to extend the tracks length beyond the parameters of the song. That way the host DAW doesn't see a \"start\" to the track and reserve power by toggling the plug in resources.