4 ms·
Yes, that's some pretty old information, but I used to think the same thing. The main cause of latency is audio buffer size. At the same buffer size, the diff
by dietrichepp 10y ago
Yes, that's some pretty old information, but I used to think the same thing. The main cause of latency is audio buffer size. At the same buffer size, the difference between FireWire, USB, and optical is not really enough to care about. The main reason you'd use a higher buffer size is if your software can't handle half as much data in half as much time.
There were some problems with old software and hardware that have been resolved for the past ten years or so, but USB audio could be problematic in the early 2000s. Optical was never really any better than FireWire in terms of latency.
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago> The main cause of latency is audio buffer size. Right. I'm really not an expert on this but my understanding is that with S/PDIF supposedly you have a control over the buffers on either side whereas with USB audio you are limited by the USB spec.
- dietrichepp 10y agoEh, that's not a very accurate way to describe things. S/PDIF itself transmits samples of audio one at a time, whereas USB transmits frames encoded in packets, but in practice there are going to be hardware buffers of some size, and the software will process one buffer at a time. The end result means that there are no real advantages to S/PDIF, and a number of serious disadvantages.