[wdmaudiodev] Re: KMDF for a USB audio driver?

  • From: Nick Dowell <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wdmaudiodev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 17:34:09 +0000

I get the impression you don't have much of an idea how software music production applications get used, so I don't think you're qualified to speak for those of us working in this field.

On 3 Mar 2006, at 17:07, Tim Roberts wrote:

Why?  I mean, was this "10 ms" number a bullet point on a PowerPoint
slide concocted by some marketing guy after a bottle of cheap bourbon,
or do you actually have some empirical usability studies that show
complaints if latency is higher than that?

Studies have shown that hearing your own signal monitored more than 10 ms later seriously affects performer's abilities to keep in time.

http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~grace/chafeISMA.pdf

In a recording scenario one often listens to the already recorded tracks combined with their live signal with effects applied. This requires the signal to be processed by the application, and therefore go in and out of the driver.

Low latency is also very important when playing virtual software instruments. Most musicians complain when the delay between pressing a key and hearing the sound reaches over 10 ms latency, and again have trouble keeping in time or playing fast.

There's a reason why this figure of 10 ms gets used so often, and it isn't down to some marketing bozo.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't believe you. Most telephones
have vastly more than 10 ms latency. Most cell phones have many
hundreds of milliseconds of latency, and people are fine with them. 50
ms latency in a movie or TV show is undetectable.

Um, I'm not sure what your point is here. Every application has different requirements, and how often do you think musicians play together over a teleconferencing system?

If you really need sub 10 ms latency, then you need a piece of hardware,
not a general purpose computer running a consumer operating system. 

Tell that to everyone out there using Cubase, Sonar, Logic etc...

Many soundcards on Windows with custom driver offer throughput latencies of 5-10ms (just look at M-Audio, RME, MOTU, Echo...). Oh and this product on Mac OS X offers about 7ms thru latency without breaking a sweat.

Nick
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