Time Alignment controls

Time Alignment moves a lane earlier or later relative to a Time Reference. It is off by default: nothing shifts until you choose a target for a lane.

Enabling Time Alignment for a lane

Time Alignment has no separate per-lane power button. The Align To choice is the switch:

• Choose Off / Original Timing to leave the lane at its recorded arrival time.
• Choose the Group Reference to align it directly to the group’s Phase Reference.
• Choose another available lane to build a time-alignment chain.

The Phase Reference itself is the source and cannot align to another lane.

Choosing a Time Reference

Use a direct group-reference alignment for simple setups. Use another lane when the microphones form a useful sub-group.

1. Make the overhead the Phase Reference for the drum group.
2. Align the snare-top mic to the overhead if you want to change its arrival time.
3. Align the snare-bottom mic to the snare-top mic.

The snare-bottom correction then follows the snare-top relationship. If you adjust the snare-top offset, its dependent lane moves with it.

PhaseLock lists only valid targets from the same group. Targets that would create a circular chain are not offered.

Reading and editing the offset

The Offset value is the total time correction: PhaseLock’s measured offset plus any manual trim.

• Click - to move the lane 1 ms earlier.
• Click + to move the lane 1 ms later.
• Click the displayed value to type an exact offset in milliseconds.
• Click Reset Offset to remove the manual trim and return to PhaseLock’s measured result.

Adjust offsets while listening to the complete microphone balance. A visually matched transient is not always the most natural-sounding result.

Time Align: On and Bypassed

The global Time Align control enables or bypasses Time Alignment for every unlocked group. Bypassing it preserves each lane’s Time Reference and offset, so switching it back on restores the configured alignment. A locked group keeps the timing it was measured under.

Plugin latency and delay compensation

When Time Alignment is off, PhaseLock reports zero added latency. Phase Coherence and polarity processing can therefore run without the time-alignment delay.

When Time Alignment is on, every connected PhaseLock instance reports the same session delay to the DAW. PhaseLock begins with 10 ms of alignment headroom and increases it only when a measured correction needs more, up to the 50 ms alignment budget.

Note: Some DAWs apply a changed plugin delay only when playback stops. If you enable Time Alignment or analyze a setup with a larger offset, stop and restart playback before judging synchronization.

For sample-aligned monitoring, place PhaseLock consistently across the related live tracks. A DAW cannot compensate a mixture of compensated and uncompensated monitor paths outside the plugin.