Compensation Delay Line

Functionality

Compensation Delay Line is a metric based delay to compensate differing positions of microphones or speakers.

For example, you have recorded guitar with two microphones placed in different location. Because the front of sound wave has fixed speed in normal conditions, the phasing of microphones can vary and depends on their location and interposition. The best sound mix you will get when these microphones are in phase (synchronized). Note that distance of ~30 cm between microphones makes one microphone to capture signal in antiphase to another microphone. That makes the final mix sounding moody. This plugin helps to solve phasing problems by adding different delays to each microphone track and make them synchronized.

Another possible application it the compensation of PA speakers in a live concert setup. If speakers are placed inside the audience compensate them against the FOH speakers left and right to the stage to avoid echoes or phasings within the audience area.

Tips

How to synchronize microphones:

• Place microphones such that they will capture the best shape of signal
• Take the roulette and measure distance between sound source and each microphone
• Record signal as usual and do not worry abouth phasing problems
• Add this plugin to each recorded track
• Set distance value on each plugin equal to the distance for the most far separated microphone plus some spare centimeters (5-10 centimeters is enough)
• For each track subtract from distance value you have set on the previous step corresponding value that you have measured on step 1
• Now tightly rotate distance knobs and listen how does the mixed signal change. Synchronized microphones sound much louder and much cleaner. Use millimeter distance knob for fine tuning.

The best result can be reached when you take one track as base and synchronize other tracks one by one with it.

Remember that synchronization/delay tolerance depends on sample rate, too. Higher sample rates will give more tolerance.

Controls

• Meters: Compensation distance (meters) for hard distance setup
• Centimeters: Compensation distance (centimeters) for tighten distance setup
• Millimeters: Compensation distance (millimeters) for fine tuning
• Temperature: The temperature of the environment
• Dry Amount: Amount of the unprocessed (dry) signal.
• Wet Amount: Amount of the processed (wet) signal.