There is something that has been bothering me with the "latency" issue.
I was having trouble getting rid of the clicks when playing Pianoteq live through my digital piano. On the ProductionForums, it was suggested that I increase my latency to 20 ms. I had always thought that one had to have 5 ms or less latency or the delay would be objectionable.
Sound travels at approximately 1126 fps in dry air (343 metres per second). So in one millisecond (1.00 ms), sound travels 1.126 feet or .34 metres.
If I was playing on a stage 32.8 feet wide (10 metres) with one other musician on the opposite side of the stage from me, then his sound would take 32.8 ft divided by 1.126 ft/second = 29 milliseconds (10/.343) to reach me.
29 milliseconds? That's way more than 5 milliseconds, so I guess we wouldn't be able to play together would we? But this happens all the time with groups on a large stage, so what's going on?
And how do large school bands marching down the street that often stretch out over a length of 50 or 100 feet ever play together?
We might want to explore this further.
To solve my problem, I set the latency on my sound card (using ASIO) to 20 ms, and couldn't "feel" the difference between 20 ms and 5 ms.
The reason that sports events (like the Olympics) use electronic timing as opposed to humans with a stopwatch, is because humans can't be relied upon to operate a stopwatch accurately enough. When the swimmer hits the "end" the signal is sent at the speed of light (which is a bit faster than sound). If humans timed an extremely close race, we would likely give the gold medal to the second place finisher.
Note to Etalmor - my processor is a dual core AMD, and at 10 ms latency I get clicks, but not at 20 ms.
Glenn
EDIT (11 Jan 09): Clarification of the above is in order.
The click problem isn't likely my soundcard as it's an EMU 1820M. Before I first attempted to use Pianoteq live (through the keyboard), I dutifully read the manual, and mistakenly thought that I had to use Pianoteq as a
VSTi.
I downloaded VSTHost, set everything up, and it worked but the latency was horrible and simply unworkable.
By accident I discovered it worked when VSTHost wasn't loaded and working; then I tried ASIO with my soundcard, and discovered that even with the latency set at 20 ms, I couldn't discern the time delay between hitting a key and hearing the sound.
I've tried the latency at 50 ms, but this IS noticeable.
Last edited by Glenn NK (11-01-2009 18:45)
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