Lets Do The Time Warp Again

Clutching at straws, you mention the Focusrite Mix Control won't let you go below 1024 latency.  This sounds awfully high to me--I use around 256 on a much less powerful machine than yours.  What happens if you set latency in Audition first then match the Focusrite control?

Beyond that, you're working at 24/96.  Have you tried 16/44.1 just to see if that makes a difference.  Also maybe experiment with different USB ports.

I may have made a significant discovery in regard to this problem.

I reiterate "may", but I'm hopeful this information may be of use to the design team.

During today's tracking sessions I (of course) encountered the issue again and one instance of the drift problem occurred after booting the computer (versus after a long tracking session). So I have clarity about exactly what was going on when it happened and I'm hoping this information is germane.

Stacking Tracks

One of the ways I work with Audition is to "stack" tracks while tracking - meaning that upon completion of recording I typically make a decision to either "Undo" (Control Z) and disregard the take, or alternatively if I decide the track is worth keeping I will "stack" it. What  stacking entails is the following workflow;

- Since the just-finished track is typically the "highlighted" track, I issue a "alt-A" to create a new track below the currently highlighted track.

- Next I drag the Clip from it's current track into the newly created track, and then Mute that track preparing for another take at the performance.

- Hit record and re-use the track used for the prior take.

I think this is significant.

The reason I do this is to simplify comping a series of takes into a single composite later, and by re-using the same Track then I preserve a filename sequence. When I first create the track used to record, I name it something meaningful, for instance "Bass" and the automatically generated filename is sequential. Bass-001, Bass-002, etc. It makes it simple to refer to a particular take as "file 001" or "file 002" etc. Having each take stacked makes it simple to audition (no pun intended) each take, muting one and moving to the next adjacent Track to hear another take while comping.

Today, shortly after booting the machine, I stacked a track and proceeded to the next take which was immediately defective. There was no "hours of tracking" in the cache, buffers, etc and absolutely no plugins in memory as I have stripped them all way from the effects box and rebooted prior to tracking this instance. When start first open Audition, when I load the first session and that session contains plugins in the effects box on any track, the Waves (the brand of plug-ins I'm using) logo flashes momentarily as part of the loading process for the session in Audition. In today's example I had cleared all plugins, rebooted and reset the Focusrite interface prior to launching Audition. There were 6 other tracks playing while I recorded 1 track, which is a light load for this machine.

So this action of "stacking" tracks, or moving a clip from where it was originally recorded into a newly created and empty Track seems to be a common denominator for my issue as I look back over every session where I encounter the problem with sync.

Could there be some error in creating the new clip after the previous clip is moved to another track? I don't know - that's the thing I think needs to be explored.

The good news for me today is that I've discovered by zooming in the waveform where the previous take and the currently being recorded take can be viewed as the recording in progress begins, I can see immediately if the recording is defective and I have a screenshot to attach demonstrating the obvious defect in the currently being recorded track.

Another significant discovery today is that once the issue occurs it may NOT necessarily recur on the next attempted recording. Having the ability to immediately discern when a track has gotten off on the wrong foot (so to speak) makes it a quick matter to stop and restart the recording and what I discovered is that the sync issue is not persistent. Once the defect has reared it's ugly head, now being discovered by the first or second note of the track under way, I can reasonably ask my client to wait while I reset and have another go. Several takes later, no drift. Seemed to just be the first take after stacking a track!

Below is my view at the beginning of a recording where the delayed capture of the very first note is evident. This is two takes of the same part (a bass guitar). When I see this misalignment I know that the take is useless and stop immediately which is of course a pain for a paying client but better than getting to the end and discovering 4 minutes of wasted effort. This screenshot was not taken in realtime (you  don't see a red recording armed indicator) but is an accurate recreation. I placed the short clip back into the multi-track editor to show two tracks as they appeared earlier.

-Kent

What are your master clock sync settings set to?