4 ms·

Some people really care about milliseconds.

bheadmaster 4y ago
In music production, milliseconds can mean the difference between being able to play perfectly (due to low-latency feedback) and making mistakes every couple of bars (due to high-latency feedback). Try playing an instrument while listening to 100ms delayed feedback - it's practically impossible to stay on the beat.
- throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
  Yes, and Gentoo makes highly fine-tuned optimizations very manageable. For most, this is not very practical, but it may offer some millisecond-level improvements for those looking for it. Being able to strictly compile for your preferred audio stack could be beneficial. My fastest booting machine was definitely Gentoo with a custom kernel. Any audio improvements may be purely theoretical here, but maybe not. I would be curious to see benchmarks or anecdotes from anyone who's needed to do this themselves.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > but it may offer some millisecond-level improvements DA latency is a factor of processing speed when converting analog signals to digital information. The issue arrises with older hardware when individually tracking large numbers of channels, such as 64 or 128 simultaneously. Leaps in CPU speed increases have somewhat stalled due to the limits of Moore's Law and physics yet have done so at acceptably fast speeds for audio. Though the smallest latency a human can hear is about 20ms, it is easy and practical to reduce latency by scrutinizing signal path.
- Maursault 4y ago
  Audio bandwidth requirements are small. Latency hasn't especially been an issue in professional digital audio production for decades. While analog signal latency is still what it is, it practically is not any issue below distances of thousands of miles, nor is it getting any worse. That said, even though Gentoo isn't as brain-dead simple to install and get working as most other distros, I think this is a cool idea. But installing Ardour, Audacity and Cadence on any distro would get you most of the way there with very little difference in performance on modern hardware. I think popularity would increase if these tools were neatly packaged for any distro. But if the hardware was older and very limited, Gentoo would be the way to go, with a slight Gentoo learning curve.
  - BizarroLand 4y ago
    Minor kibbitz, but I wouldn't say, "latency hasn't been a problem for decades" in professional digital audio production. Maybe for studios that shelled out 5 large for a protools setup, but for smaller and non-protools pro recording studios latency is still a potential factor today. Anything USB 2.0 would have latency if you were doing anything to the incoming audio live (like running a little reverb plugin on vocals) then it very well could cause audio latency and or stuttering issues. Thunderbolt & USB 3.0 seems to have solved this (unless you are piping a lot of effects live on a weaker machine) but those only started hitting their stride 4-5 years ago.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      Old digi equipment is cheap[1], usually in great shape, and sounds the same as the day it was new and better than any sub$800 USB2 interface. Previous versions of Pro Tools can be matched to the old equipment and downloaded right off digi's site.[2] But there are 2 difficulties, knowing what card goes with what interface in what old computer on what OS version, and licensing. But at some previous version, everything is cracked, or one can purchase old licensing with the hardware. I'd estimate for time researching, $500 of equipment including the old computer, as much hacking it to work as Gentoo alone would require, one could reasonably easily have 16 or 32 channels of old Pro Tools and never see latency problems from stacking effects on every channel, even on something like an 800MHz G4 or 2GHz Core2Duo. Issue is, it will sound like Pro Tools from whatever era it's from, which was never bad, just distinctive, and most wouldn't even notice. Software's just not going to solve crappy hardware. [1] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=digidesign+192+i%2Fo&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_odkw=digidesign+192 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=digidesign+19... [2] http://secure.digidesign.com/services/avid/kb/downloads.cfm http://secure.digidesign.com/services/avid/kb/downloads.cfm

In music production, milliseconds can mean the difference between being able to play perfectly (due to low-latency feedback) and making mistakes every couple of bars (due to high-latency feedback). Try playing an instrument while listening to 100ms delayed feedback - it's practically impossible to stay on the beat.

throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
Yes, and Gentoo makes highly fine-tuned optimizations very manageable. For most, this is not very practical, but it may offer some millisecond-level improvements for those looking for it. Being able to strictly compile for your preferred audio stack could be beneficial. My fastest booting machine was definitely Gentoo with a custom kernel. Any audio improvements may be purely theoretical here, but maybe not. I would be curious to see benchmarks or anecdotes from anyone who's needed to do this themselves.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > but it may offer some millisecond-level improvements DA latency is a factor of processing speed when converting analog signals to digital information. The issue arrises with older hardware when individually tracking large numbers of channels, such as 64 or 128 simultaneously. Leaps in CPU speed increases have somewhat stalled due to the limits of Moore's Law and physics yet have done so at acceptably fast speeds for audio. Though the smallest latency a human can hear is about 20ms, it is easy and practical to reduce latency by scrutinizing signal path.
Maursault 4y ago
Audio bandwidth requirements are small. Latency hasn't especially been an issue in professional digital audio production for decades. While analog signal latency is still what it is, it practically is not any issue below distances of thousands of miles, nor is it getting any worse. That said, even though Gentoo isn't as brain-dead simple to install and get working as most other distros, I think this is a cool idea. But installing Ardour, Audacity and Cadence on any distro would get you most of the way there with very little difference in performance on modern hardware. I think popularity would increase if these tools were neatly packaged for any distro. But if the hardware was older and very limited, Gentoo would be the way to go, with a slight Gentoo learning curve.
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  Minor kibbitz, but I wouldn't say, "latency hasn't been a problem for decades" in professional digital audio production. Maybe for studios that shelled out 5 large for a protools setup, but for smaller and non-protools pro recording studios latency is still a potential factor today. Anything USB 2.0 would have latency if you were doing anything to the incoming audio live (like running a little reverb plugin on vocals) then it very well could cause audio latency and or stuttering issues. Thunderbolt & USB 3.0 seems to have solved this (unless you are piping a lot of effects live on a weaker machine) but those only started hitting their stride 4-5 years ago.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    Old digi equipment is cheap[1], usually in great shape, and sounds the same as the day it was new and better than any sub$800 USB2 interface. Previous versions of Pro Tools can be matched to the old equipment and downloaded right off digi's site.[2] But there are 2 difficulties, knowing what card goes with what interface in what old computer on what OS version, and licensing. But at some previous version, everything is cracked, or one can purchase old licensing with the hardware. I'd estimate for time researching, $500 of equipment including the old computer, as much hacking it to work as Gentoo alone would require, one could reasonably easily have 16 or 32 channels of old Pro Tools and never see latency problems from stacking effects on every channel, even on something like an 800MHz G4 or 2GHz Core2Duo. Issue is, it will sound like Pro Tools from whatever era it's from, which was never bad, just distinctive, and most wouldn't even notice. Software's just not going to solve crappy hardware. [1] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=digidesign+192+i%2Fo&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_odkw=digidesign+192 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=digidesign+19... [2] http://secure.digidesign.com/services/avid/kb/downloads.cfm http://secure.digidesign.com/services/avid/kb/downloads.cfm