Input Channel Delay position options

dLive dLive Feature Suggestions
1

Hi!
It would be great to have an option, to move Input Channel Delay right after preamp (instead of end of chain). Here is why:
When aligning close drums mics to overheads, one would typically delay close mic couple ms. IMHO this makes a huge difference for drums sound in FOH as well as in Inears. Not only this slight delay makes drums sound tighter and bigger (because in phase), but it also allows some pre-time for gate opening if used with triggers in sidechain. This makes gate opening sound more natural. With current settings, musicians get drums sounds unaligned to their ears and gate is opening mid-transient.

dLive’s automatic delay compensation doesn’t make so much sense, when the sources are not aligned from the beginning.
Meanwhile, If anyone knows current workaround, please share.

2

First, I understand your use case and agree that having the delay to be positioned right after the preamp would make more sense in those cases.

That being said, I don’t think there is a “perfect” place to put the delay compensation in a channel’s processing chain. Regardless of where you put it, there will always be use cases that would benefit from having it in a different location.

As far as a work around, there are a couple of options:

  1. Send the audio to the IEM mix as “post delay”. This is an option if you are using prefader sends and by definition, a post fader send is after the delay settings.

  2. If that doesn’t work for some reason (due to other channel processing), you can double patch inputs (assuming you have some spare channels available) and process them differently. In other words, if there is some processing being done on the FOH channels that prevents you from being able to use it as a post delay IEM send, then double patch and create a IEM channel that doesn’t have that extra processing. You should be able to send it out post delay with only the processing that you want in the IEM send.

3

Thank you for your reply. I will try “post delay” for IEM mix. Although this solves monitoring alignment, but it doesnt provide benefit of using ext sidechain with “look ahead” style process.

I understand, that there is always a use case where delay is better to have in one position, than other. Thats why user selectable option would be perfect (just like eq→ comp VS comp→eq option in dLive).
Just out of curiosity, which cases are benefiting from having input channel delay post all processing?

4

Why do musicians get the channels pre delay? All of my bands get post delay mixes. :person_shrugging: