Using Plug-Ins While Recording and Overdubbing

Before saying anything on this subject, it’s worth taking a moment to talk about delay. And yes, the irony is intentional. There are lots of plug-ins available to help get your creativity in motion while writing, composing, brainstorming, or performing whatever other tasks your pre-production process might include. But once you are ready to start recording some of those ideas, it’s time to start double-checking how the processing delay, or “latency,” might affect the timing of your performance.

This type of delay and how to deal with it is covered in more detail in the last section of this chapter, and also in Chapter 7. For now, it’s sufficient to say that processing an audio signal takes time, and if you’re not careful about it, that processing delay can mess up your recording. You might record an overdub out of time because you’re listening to a track that has some plug-in delay that makes it arrive late to your headphones.