On Fri, 25 Feb 2022, Jeremy Jongepier wrote:
On 24-02-2022 19:57, Len Ovens wrote:
While there have been many rules of thumb in the past for tuning a system
for audio, the reality is that each system is different and requires
different steps (with testing).
Those rules of thumb should still apply mostly.
The word "mostly" pretty much sums it up. There is no low latency audio
recipe that can be dropped in and just work. Each machine/device
combination will require tweaking. For some of us that tweaking comes
naturally (I generally don't really notice what I do to achieve a good
result) but when I try explaining it to someone else via email or irc, it
is obvious that many people either do not find it very natural or just
have an unsuitable machine.
The other reality is that some
of the newer systems have fewer choices (like laptops) and the user will
just have to get used to higher latency audio use.
Personally I think every system is tunable/tweakable to a certain degree.
Haven't come across a system yet that I couldn't get to run low latency audio
within the limits of that system and I've tried quite a few.
"to a certain degree" and "within the limits of that system" seem to me to
be saying the same thing. each system has a limit as to how well it will
do low latency audio and the user will have to live within that.
Of course USB 2.0
audio has it's own group of difficulties as well.
Which ones? Can't think of anything else but class compliance.
The same audio device plugged into different physical ports on most
machines will yield different results, I would say newer mother boards but
maybe newer kernels because I used to be able to at least raise the
priority of one port over the next, but at some point it did not make any
difference which port I plugged into my device ends up on the same USB bus
as everything else (printer, mouse, keyboard, webcam, external drive,
etc). The only cure seems to be adding a dedicated PCIe USB card for the
device. Class compliance is merely the entry fee to get audio in and out
of the machine. One can record and play back with that and use external
monitoring no problem. Using a set of drum pads with a soft synth maybe
not. It seems a firewire device using the ffado driver for jack, out
performs any USB device.
Just as a reference, I have noticed, in a live situation with all analog
equipment, that by the time I get 30 feet away from monitors and FOH, my
timing suffers. Latency matters.
--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net
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