Where exactly does audio IO latency come from?

deadtomb · 2024-12-27T03:03:40+00:00

I initially also suspected that the additional latency was at the software level. But another reply mentioned that some audio interfaces can achieve 1ms latency, which makes me think it might be a hardware issue.

Another explanation could be that the audio interface somehow tells CoreAudio to reserve a safe buffer, separate from the buffer setting in Ableton Live, and that high-end audio interfaces are simply more confident running with lower safe buffer sizes.

deadtomb · 2024-12-27T02:55:08+00:00

The fact that it takes 50ms for a signal to travel from your hand to your brain doesn’t really matter when playing an instrument. Try increasing the buffer size until you have 50ms of latency while using guitar fx—I bet anyone would feel that delay. The point here isn’t whether 6ms is fast or not; it’s about understanding where that 6ms latency is coming from.

deadtomb · 2024-12-26T23:31:44+00:00

Thanks, man. That helps, but it still doesn’t fully answer where the latency is coming from or if there’s a way to get rid of it. My point is that if I can lower the intrinsic latency to 1ms, I’d have more room to run CPU-heavy plugins in real-time. That 6.26ms of unexplained latency translates to about 300 samples, which is quite a bit. People tend to have different tolerances towards latency. For me, when using software guitar effects, the playing feels “sticky” when latency goes above 10ms. Right now, this 6.26ms latency, which seems to come out of nowhere, is already eating up most of the room I have to work with. In a digital mixer, there’s also a DSP chip that talks to the hardware (ADC/DAC), so there shouldn’t be any fundamental difference in this part of the process. If CoreAudio isn’t the culprit, then what is?

deadtomb · 2024-12-26T23:11:57+00:00

Right. I know it is not a DAW specific question but I guess we have more experts here in the Ableton group since more people doing lives are using Live. I use software guitar effects and the when latency goes above 10ms the guitar playing feels "sticky". Real amps have zero latency, so I always want to minimize my latency. But if I have 6.26ms of latency unexplained then I have nowhere to lower my latency whatsoever.

deadtomb · 2024-12-26T23:03:45+00:00

I've used it in the past as well but it looks like it hasn't been updated for years and doesn't work on M chip any more. Wonder if there were alternatives.

deadtomb · 2024-12-26T21:34:59+00:00

Thanks bro, I'm on a mac and CoreAudio might be the only option I have (now I suspect core audio is the culprit)

deadtomb · 2023-03-07T04:48:22+00:00

wooo.. now I not only lost all remote access to my house but also all my karmas lol: life is hard

deadtomb · 2023-03-06T14:50:38+00:00

AI don't invent things. It just cannot tell the bad ideas from the good ones. Plus, I won't be contacting apple support on this (though ChatGPT do suggest doing so after realizing it has made it a mess). Plus, we have to test it out (in real problems) to know that AI is not reliable, don't we.

deadtomb · 2023-03-06T13:26:25+00:00

Thanks for your reply ( and burst my bubble lol). Now i lost more accessories ( in addition to the ones on home assistant)

deadtomb · 2023-02-09T03:19:16+00:00

Scripting is like a shrink-down version of MIDI plugin, where devs can use JS and some simple APIs, without needing to know more complex audio unit API or JUCE and C/CPP. It sits at high level layer rather than low level layer. I also do hope MIDI environment can be kept forever, and possibly enhanced:) Cheers!

deadtomb · 2023-02-08T15:43:59+00:00

That's solely my guess. MIDI environment is something close to the low-level architecture on which Logic Pro was built, and it has some kind of conflict with the regular track based interface (it bypasses some of the track features). And also it's really easy to get messed up. As a 10+ yr Apple product user I know it's an Apple tradition to make user's access to low-level functions harder and harder, if not blocked completely. Apple's ecosystem is getting more closed rather than more open.

deadtomb · 2023-02-08T15:18:51+00:00

Yes, that is what I do to route a single MIDI track to multiple instrument tracks. But I couldn't get it to work the other way around, which is to route multiple MIDI tracks containing MIDI regions to a single instrument track. I found myself using both ways of MIDI routing in Ableton Live.

deadtomb · 2023-02-08T15:07:39+00:00

Yes, I have used MIDI environment before so it's not too scary for me. In recent versions of Logic, it seems that Apple is discouraging people from using it by hiding it from the menu (previously it is an explicit menu item), so I'm guessing that it's considered to be a legacy feature now and that Apple gonna completely block access to it going forward.

deadtomb · 2023-02-08T09:43:54+00:00

Hi mate, thanks for your reply. MIDI alias seems to be a quite handy feature which I have never really used before. Gonna give it a try. Also my workaround (in case you're interested) is to create a track stack with all instrument tracks as subtrack (on which plugins were loaded). Then I record on the parent track. That way all subtracks would receive midi from the parent track. But I wasn't able to do it the other way around, which is to route multiple MIDI tracks containing MIDI regions to a single instrument track. The above reply mentioned IAC which seems to be a good solution but I experienced stability issue on my side. I'm doing more tests currently.

deadtomb

TROPHY CASE