5 ms·

"To my eyes, the delay is obvious at 100 ms, noticeable at 50 ms, barely perceptible at 20 ms, and unnoticeable at 10 ms." That's how it goes with my ears when

"To my eyes, the delay is obvious at 100 ms, noticeable at 50 ms, barely perceptible at 20 ms, and unnoticeable at 10 ms." That's how it goes with my ears when recording as well. Most "Live feedback" mechanisms for guitar programs (heck even computer-made guitar hardware) have about 50ms of latency, which is quite disconcerting when you're doing something heavily timing-based. 10ms is almost imperceptible to me (sounds more like the tiniest slightest reverb delay) and 5ms might as well be realtime as far as I'm concerned. An example, in Windows 10, I could go to the built-in mixer, turn on the "Listen to this device" and play with my guitar plugged right into the computer, and you're looking at about 100 ms or so of latency. Completely unacceptable when you're listening to a metronome to keep on time. Alternatively, I can go to the Realtek HD Audio Manager in the taskbar (because I installed the actual RealTek driver package instead of relying upon the Windows drivers) and un-mute the line in, and even with an amp and mixer board in-line before the computer, the feedback is essentially instantaneous, which allows for pre-baked instant reaction times (eg muscle memory) to work and record in time with the metronome (or backing track.)

Kadin 9y ago
This is why I'll never buy a DAC that doesn't have a headphone monitor output on the front panel! The performance of low-latency audio has gotten worse over time, not better, at least on the Mac. (It was better under OS 9 than anytime since, I think.) Another fun test you can do, if you have an analog mixer, is to run some input signal into the mixer, then to the PC, and then from the PC back out, and monitor both the original input and the signal from the PC at the same time. OS-supplied drivers typically make it sound like you're in the Grand Canyon. But even with very expensive low-latency gear, you can still tell if you put one signal into the left headphone channel and another into the right. If there's actually zero latency, you'll perceive the sounds as coming from directly in front of (some people perceive as directly behind) you. It'll sound just like mono. Any latency, given the same volume level, will be perceptible as a difference in "location" of the sound. My unscientific experiments suggest that you can perceive down to about 1ms latency quite clearly this way across most of the audible range. The minimum is frequency dependent (as you'd expect) with lower frequencies being less sensitive. Presumably the human brain has evolved to be extremely good at arrival time comparisons (maybe even doing some sort of phase-difference stuff) as a way of triangulating the origin point of sounds. There are doubtless other specialized ways in which the brain is equally sensitive, so the 100ms rule of thumb seems pretty naive to me. 100ms might hold true for the "main loop" of the human brain at the level of conscious thought, perhaps.
- Moru 9y ago
  As I understand it, when they talk about 100 ms being the fastest possible thing we can notice, they mean if we can notice a reply from a computer was instantanious or if there was a delay. If we get to compare instantaneous to 10 ms lag in realtime sound, we can very easily hear the difference. But if we type a question to a computer and get a text answer within 100 ms we will persive it as being instantaneous. http://theixdlibrary.com/pdf/Miller1968.pdf http://theixdlibrary.com/pdf/Miller1968.pdf
- nasredin 9y ago
  Sorry for off-topic. What reasonably-priced DAC would you recommend? In the market for one currently.

Kadin 9y ago

This is why I'll never buy a DAC that doesn't have a headphone monitor output on the front panel! The performance of low-latency audio has gotten worse over time, not better, at least on the Mac. (It was better under OS 9 than anytime since, I think.) Another fun test you can do, if you have an analog mixer, is to run some input signal into the mixer, then to the PC, and then from the PC back out, and monitor both the original input and the signal from the PC at the same time. OS-supplied drivers typically make it sound like you're in the Grand Canyon. But even with very expensive low-latency gear, you can still tell if you put one signal into the left headphone channel and another into the right. If there's actually zero latency, you'll perceive the sounds as coming from directly in front of (some people perceive as directly behind) you. It'll sound just like mono. Any latency, given the same volume level, will be perceptible as a difference in "location" of the sound. My unscientific experiments suggest that you can perceive down to about 1ms latency quite clearly this way across most of the audible range. The minimum is frequency dependent (as you'd expect) with lower frequencies being less sensitive. Presumably the human brain has evolved to be extremely good at arrival time comparisons (maybe even doing some sort of phase-difference stuff) as a way of triangulating the origin point of sounds. There are doubtless other specialized ways in which the brain is equally sensitive, so the 100ms rule of thumb seems pretty naive to me. 100ms might hold true for the "main loop" of the human brain at the level of conscious thought, perhaps.

Moru 9y ago
As I understand it, when they talk about 100 ms being the fastest possible thing we can notice, they mean if we can notice a reply from a computer was instantanious or if there was a delay. If we get to compare instantaneous to 10 ms lag in realtime sound, we can very easily hear the difference. But if we type a question to a computer and get a text answer within 100 ms we will persive it as being instantaneous. http://theixdlibrary.com/pdf/Miller1968.pdf http://theixdlibrary.com/pdf/Miller1968.pdf
nasredin 9y ago
Sorry for off-topic. What reasonably-priced DAC would you recommend? In the market for one currently.