From deke@dekethegeek.com Sun Jan 05 09:51:21 2003
Subject:RE: b4 and latency

For home practice (not playing with other musicians), or for sequencing, you could use 30 ms, but in a live setting 30 ms would be unusable. To expound further on my earlier post, it's the conversion from digital to analog that keeps you from getting lower latency. The catch is... when you are using ASIO drivers with a pro level soundcard, the card itself handles not only the D/A conversion, but uses its own processor to handle the CPU cycles to accomplish the conversion (I believe... Steffan?) and a regular soundcard relies on the speed of the main CPU to handle the math associated with the conversions. I am sure this is entirely too general of a statement as it varies from card to card, but this is the general idea. Not to mention the fact that the D/A converters on a pro level card are of much higher quality than those on a "consumer" level soundcard. I have heard rumors that the Soundblaster Audigy has native ASIO support, but I've never used one so I can't be sure. Another possible explanation that seems plausible is that the ASIO drivers push the D/A converter much harder, and lesser cards can't handle the pressure. In any event it would be well worth your money to get a better soundcard with ASIO support, especially for live performance.

Deke The Geek

< I work with a 30ms latency without usb audio card. I don't feel so uncomfortable.>>