Return track phasing in Ableton

[magnetron_sputtering]

I'm having a strange issue with a send effect in Ableton and it's driving me up the walls. Google has turned up nothing of use.

I'm sending my kick/snare track to a return track with a heavy compressor on it (a.k.a. parallel compression). But when I turn up the send amount I get a phasing effect added to the signal. Now after playing with it for a while I find that I don't get this phasing when I send any other track in the project to the parallel compressor. It sounds fine when the compressor is off and gradually gets worse as I bring the threshold down. I've checked other projects where I've used the exact same set-up and no phasing. This only started the other night too. I assume I did something but what??? An effect that's meant to beef up the signal is making it sound wimpy and not just a little bit, it's really noticeable in the overall mix.

Any suggestions what I might try?

[nowaysj]

Really sounds like there is a problem with how the plugin is reporting it's latency to ableton, so ableton is not able to accurately compensate...

But some other facts of this sound realllly strange like changing the threshold changes the phasey sound? Can you manually set the delay offset for the track, and get it back to a point where it doesn't phase?

Which comp are you using?

[Basic A]

Really sounds like there is a problem with how the plugin is reporting it's latency to ableton, so ableton is not able to accurately compensate...

But some other facts of this sound realllly strange like changing the threshold changes the phasey sound? Can you manually set the delay offset for the track, and get it back to a point where it doesn't phase?

Which comp are you using?

Eh it makes sense, change the amplitude/shape of a signal, change the phase... isnt a flanger just an out of phase signal with lfos on the volume/delay?

OP, try splitting your signal into two, putting your compressor on both, set one up to effect, set the other to 0:0 0db, passthrough, then sum the two, so they have identical amounts of plugin delay... in FL this happens from problems with the PDC engine, and that always fixes it...

[nowaysj]

Eh it makes sense, change the amplitude/shape of a signal, change the phase...

I don't know man... I know of a few plugs that change their amount of latency depending on settings, like obviously plugs with a knob for look ahead, and it is questionable if the daw updates the varying amount of latency from the plug, but a plug increasing the latency with the threshold of a compressor... I don't know about that one. I'd like to know which comp it is.

[Sine69]

Click the View tab up at the top and enable track delay. See if you can play with the delay settings on your return track to prevent the phasing?

[Disco Nutter]

Or just bounce to audio if plugin delay compensation is the problem.

[JTMMusicuk]

none of the above, just send your signal to return tracks only

[magnetron_sputtering]

I'm using Ableton's own compressor. I can change the 'lookahead' value (0ms/1ms/10ms) on it which removes the phasing but also changes the sound of the compressed signal to something that sounds... less compressed. I can change the delay on each track. I haven't tried this yet but I'll give it a go later on.

Eh it makes sense, change the amplitude/shape of a signal, change the phase

Do you mean the phase is changed due to latency in the compressor or is it something inherent to the compression itself? I thought it just changed signal amplitude.

Thanks for the suggestions. Another workaround was to use an effect chain insert on the track with two chains, one blank and one compressed. It works, but I'd still like to know why a return track is giving such latency problems all of a sudden.

[nowaysj]

This sounds like a deeper ableton question, and unfortunately I'm no help. A compressor should not introduce latency like that.

Is it possible the original signal is being delayed by something? Is the send a prefx send?

[magnetron_sputtering]

If you mean the pre/pot toggle switch on the master strip (Ableton calls it pre/post fader), I have it set to post. Think I'm just going to go with the workaround on this. I'm fast getting sick of the sight this project!!

[bassinine]

just use the in/out of the sends. then group the channels... makes it cleaner, and then you can adjust the latency of that particular channel either positively or negatively to remove the phasing. or induce it, if you please.

[nowaysj]

Feel u on that, but good idea to get to the bottom of these things lest they haunt u from project to project.

[arktrix45hz]

If you mean the pre/pot toggle switch on the master strip (Ableton calls it pre/post fader), I have it set to post. Think I'm just going to go with the workaround on this. I'm fast getting sick of the sight this project!!

Set it to pre, pretty sure that solved my issue.

Also, if you have any EQ or other plugins in your kick/snare, copy them to the parallell channel but reset all the settings like Q points etc so they're all flat!