Or: "The Latency Myth", "The Latency Lie" or "Traveling at the speed of Sound".

Ok guys, thread open for discussion.
I'm writing this, as over the years I've seen hundrets of interface-shopping-threads,
where people are discussing the holy grail of latency, not knowing anything about it really.

As I dived into that some time ago, I'd love to bring some light into that issue.
This will help everyone who wants fo find an interface for playing plugins via keyboard in
realtime or want to use a computer as realtime fx interface.

I've read a lot "my interface get's down to 2ms" and I was always like "uhm.. no!".
Well, how is that possible, why "no???" I can read it in my daw! 2ms!.

All I know about this I've learned from dawbench.com plus measureing everything a could find at home. And that's quite some stuff.
Read the whole site! It offers a howto and a tool to measure latency yourself.
(And read the graph right, it is a rating, not an ms graph (10 is better than 2)

I came to that issue when I wanted to use my esi interface as a kontakt instrument interface.
because it was that one interface that had the lowest latency. lower than my rme stuff.

Funny enough, it felt quite "late". It felt far from RME's 3ms, felt more like RME's 6ms... so I wanted
to measure that and did some googling. Found dawbench.com and was like "no fucking way oO"

Interface-drivers TELL (!) your daw the latency. the daw does not have the possibility to check latency back. The interface can tell whatever it wants.
So many interfaces do simple math: 32 samples buffer at 44.1khz results in...
But thats not how to do it. Thats marketting.
According to my own measurements and dawbench the only interfaces on the market that do not lie about their latency are RME and Steinberg.

Yeah, so why is "32 samples results in".. wrong? Because there is way more to it than the ram-buffer inside the interface. There is the pcie bus or the usb port, the D/A and A/D converters and most important:
the only thing we're interested in is roundtrip latency.
because we're interested in the time between hitting the piano key and the output or the guitar audio in and the output.

I don't have to dive too much into detail, because dawbench.com explains it way better than I could, I just want to start a "hey, think about it"-thread.
And trust noone! (me neither, measure yourself!)

PS: Have you ever thought about that: the sound from your speakers to you ears takes approximately 3ms per meter. If your speakers are actively powered by a digital amp that will add latency. If group delay of your speakers is not compensated, some frequencies might get many (!) ms later to your ears. If group dely is compensated, that compensation might take 1,8ms or more (as neumann ks80 clearly tells in it's documentation. most other brands don't care / don't tell).
now I gave you something to worry about BESIDES your interface latency

 

fkn companies always have to be scummy in some way don't they... I guess one company lies about the latency then every company ends up doing it to compete... otherwise, why the hell would they lie about latency? Just tell me the real latency of the product freekin hell... i'm not gnna freakin go nuts about latency anyway at the end of the day I need an interface and I'm looking more about the price than latency...

 

man thank you

motu ?

 

The day you will record external instruments instead of plugins,you will be looking the latency specs.

 

I always monitor just the live capture from a microphone or DI. If in the rare instance I am using a bunch of virtual instruments I will freeze those tracks (record them either singlely or in groups) to de-stress my current less than mean machine's processor. I find for myself using the DSP reverb inside TotalMix which is part of current RME software to good "effect".

 

amahhhgaaawd !!!!
i listened to a Jazztrio live yesterday in 5 Meters distance with 15ms Latency and the Crashcymbal had severe Interferences with the HiHat....

 

I have Totalmix FX too,but do you record the reverb from Totalmix FX into your DAW??How do you do that?I don't know how I must configure Totalmix FX and the DAW...

 

No, I don't record wet from TotalMix and don't believe that is an option as I am still using a 7 year old Babyface and only utilizes two inputs and outs (which is functioning perfectly after all this time and I'm the 2nd owner..and has rarely been powered down).Perhaps the newer three channel Pro version as well as all the others support what you are asking.

From the RME forum...

the reverb is mainly for monitoring purposes but if you want to record it send your input channel from the top row of totalmix to one of the output channels on the bottom row.. (one which has nothing plugged into the output) and then select "Loopback" on that output channel and record that channel in your DAW..

for example.... if you have a mic on input 9 of UFX and nothing connected to line output 5.. select 5 on bottom row, bring up the fader level so channel 9 is metering on output 5 and also raise the FX return level to the same settings you have for the other channels so the FX are being sent there.. then select "loopback" on channel 5 and select it as your input in the DAW.. your DAW will then record channel 5 output from totalmix which will include FX... be careful not to send other signals to output 5 in totalmix as your DAW will record everything being sent there...

the example I gave about line 5 in last post means AN 5/6..

if you select one of the stereo outputs on bottom row of totalmix it will show a button called loopback, it sounds like you have seen this already.. if you press loopback for ADAT 1/2 and then select ADAT 1/2 as your input recording source in studio one it will record from the totalmix output channel (bottom row).. what you then do is highlight the ADAT 1/2 output on bottom row of total mix (click on it), raise the fader on top row of total mix for whatever input channel you want to send to ADAT 1/2 and record.. In order to record with FX also you must raise the FX send level of the channel on top row and raise the FX return level on ADAT 1/2 on bottom row.. it will then record the ADAT 1/2 from loopback with FX in studio one.

Hope that helps.

 

Some facts about how it affects the sound quality:

Digitize/record your gear/input with higher latency, not 16 nor 32 nor 64 sample buffer..... Use more. Lower you use, more noise, decimation you get. The lowest sample buffer in asio4all always introduced more noise , distortions and other shit in recording...

Plugins: some plugins have noise knob (beatskillz reelight), more sample buffer you use, more it sounds like noise/hiss... Less sample buffer, more it sounds like zzzzz....

 

In the 1980s to early 90s, there was a great 128 channel MIDI throughput box, the Opcode 8Port SE.
It is the only box I have seen do 0 (zero) ms latency. You could simultaneously run in either rack keys or keys via MIDI 128 MIDI channels (8 x 16).
Unfortunately, the drivers have to be manually updated through Microsoft for independent certificates which is not cheap for a new signed driver, but the *.sys file is unique to the box owned. With inbuilt DAWS and samples now it's more of a relic than anything but it was great for its time.

Audio still has not managed to catch up. It's getting closer but it's not there yet.

https://reverb.com/nz/item/4855898-midiquest-opcode-8-port-se-and-14-midi-cables

 

MIDI is rather easy.
Realtime audio processing doing
A/D > effects running on your computer > D/A
is the real challenge.
You can only know by measuring the delay.

@The Observer
0ms is impossible even with MIDI, especially when you're using hardware MIDI ports.
They're running on 31250 baud with one symbol taking 320 microseconds for transmission.
A typical note-on message requires three octets: Channel, key, velocity.
Take a typical 4-note chord and you already have 3 x 4 x 320 microseconds = 3.84 milliseconds until the transmission has finished. And then add everything that causes audio latency

 

They advertised it as such and that's why it was so popular - Yes you are correct - I think they sold it that way rather than saying zero latency.
It was instantaneous, like playing a real piano (which also has latency from press to pad to hitting piano string).
It was great for its time because each port had its own engine. You can probably get the schematics - I think if you look, you can find the pdf manual it's in the manual. It was way ahead of its time.

As you iobviously know - Most VSTi sample triggers via MIDI still work the same way, controller ---->Trigger.

 

Thank you very much for this helpful answer!I will try that tomorrow.It's a bit hard to understand the routing in Totalmix FX.

 

Latency and aliasing is a price we have to pay for digital processing and convenience. Get over it.

But loads of people don't understand why there is latency in digital and no latency in analogue. Well, it's kinda related to the difference between the infinite bandwidth of analogue and finite bandwidth of digital and the resulting aliasing. Chips need time to process the signal. Simple as that. Every AD or DA, or digital algorithm [there are many 0 latency plugins, but that comes at a quality price, always remember that] has to have some time to process the signal. PDC resolves this when you're mixing, but when you're recording live instruments or vocals it can be a problem.

That's why having an interface with FX is so great - you can provide a singer or a player with some "comfort" reverb, and they don't have to cope with the phasing "fx" while recording. I'd always choose an interface with onboard 0 latency FX. There aren't many of these, mind you. I have TC StudioKonnekt 48, and some RME, Motu, and Focusrite interfaces have it.

 

But the more you increase the latency the more you increase midi jitter.So for my setup 64 samples of latency in my DAW is the best compromise.

 

yes,clearly when I want to record a synth which hasn't built-in FX,it is a problem if I want to add a Reverb or a Delay.It's probably why most of modern hi-end synths have on board FXs.

That's why I was asking to @Lois Lane how to record the RME Totalmix FX' into the DAW.

 

That's really interesting. How did you discover that? It depends a lot on the DAW, the MIDI interface you're using, and USB drivers. RME should be one of the best, even though it uses USB. USB is usually not very reliable for smooth and precise MIDI, but some interfaces work better than the others, so it doesn't mean everybody will experience bad MIDI jitter over USB. Like, my Akai MPD32 works very good over USB, but Novation Remote isn't that reliable, depending on the amount of MIDI events, too, since MIDI is a serial protocol. Both work much better when connected to the RME MIDI I/O.

A bit off topic, but hopefully useful for some.

 

Or recording through a console and just use external hardware effects. This is what I do so that latency isn't an issue.
For recording guitar DI's, I just route out to an amp for monitoring.
I remember someone complaining about the latency introduced by using Nebula for cabinet emulation. I was like "what the hell are you doing trying to monitor with live plugins? Especially Nebula? Just use an impulse response cab emulator for monitoring (if you must)"
I've just studiously avoiding any monitoring ITB and always used external hardware if some "polish" was needed to get a better performance. The latency messes with me too badly.
I suppose the same could be done with keys if you had a close enough sound in a piece of hardware to what you intended to use in the track. Just record the MIDI, and pipe it through whatever VSTi to get the final sound you're after. Heck of a lot easier than dealing with latency while you're trying to play/perform.

 

I opened a thread about midi jitter on AS some months ago.This thing makes me angry!
I spent one entire week (!!!) making measurements and tests,tweaking all settings possible in DAWs (Ableton,Cubase,Studio One) ,power settings in Windows and testing all different parameters in the BIOS for attempting to minimize midi jitter.
Some DAWs like Studio One allows you to have your time line in samples instead of bars,so you can make accurate measurements.

I tried my synths connected in USB or in midi to my midi keyboard (Akai Advance 61) or in midi to my audio interface (RME UCX) but unfortunately my audio interface and my midi keyboard are connected via USB to my pc.So my synths are inevitably connected to the computer through USB (directly to the computer or by the audio interface or the midi keyboard).

I tried all configurations and in the end I found that the more you increase latency (with of course the benefit of lower cpu consumption) the worst is your midi jitter.Try it by yourself!
One entire week making tests and measurements and writing with a pen on a notebook and comparing the results is very long,I made dozens tests,so I am sure of what I'm claiming here.

At this day I'm waiting my Expert Sleepers modules ES-40 and ESX-8MD I ordered 3 months ago (!!!).I'm in a hurry to try these things,because I hate midi jitter,it may lose the feeling of your song.

 

But I would like to try with a PCI soundcard with midi ports.Maybe midi is far more reliable in this way.I'm irritated because I had one,I lended kindly my old M-Audio Delta 192 to somebody who lost it!

 

Last edited: Nov 5, 2019