Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: [MusE] More ideas :) [Track freeze] - Alsa Sequencer
From: Jay Vaughan (seclorum_AT_mac.com)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 11:47:25 EEST
>you are right that for good real-time 'play-ability' one wants the latency
>as low as possible, but I believe that you didn't get my point that the low
>latency should not be achieved at the expense of high jitter. Running a soft
>synth with a latency of 10ms would work perfectly OK, though if that same soft
>synth had a 10ms jitter it would far for easy be audible.
>
Hi Frank,
Yes, I guess I did miss your point about jitter ... I was under the
impression you were saying that with regards to soft-synths, people
don't care about lag as long as the sound quality is good. I
apologize for any harshness that came through in my attitude... I
consider LAD to be prime pioneer territory for new audio hackers, and
I do get a little zealous in my misguided reproaches, especially when
de-cloaking from lurk mode. Bad habit.
It is a fine line. Nobody knows that better than us, and we work
hard to make sure we account for factors such as were discussed here!
>Especially during a live performance the low jitter is important. Musicians
>are used to perform with small latency... think about the time it takes
>before the sound emitted from a speaker arrives at the ear.
Well, sure, but I measure latency in terms of "processing-time ->
audio output", not "audio output -> to my ears". The latency of
sound is a constant which nobody can change - not the case with the
latency of a synthesizer.
>If you are talking about extremely high latency like 200ms or more I agree
>with you. But if recording engineers are whining that a latency of 10ms is
>too high for them to make a mix they better find a new job...
Heh heh.
>I feel amost sorry <grin> for those musicians that are playing electric
>guitars are are a few meters away from their amps. Not to mention those
>realy poor sound engineers doing the live mix for the FOH (front of house)
>PA system of an open air concert (distance from mixing desk to FOH for
>example 50m; causing a whopping 150ms of latency). Despite all of this,
>those magicians do manage to make great sounding music without any concerns
>about the latency.
Sure, operating in that environment is what makes them a professional.
>I noticed that you are working for Access, and have a vague clue where the
>misunderstanding might come from. I presume the Virus DSPs are running the
>algoritms blockless, ie. rendering one sample and streaming it to the DACs.
Our technique is a trade secret which I have no say over, so I can't
really go into it ... but the assumption is not 100% accurate.
Christoph has implemented a very innovative approach to solving these
sorts of problems, lets just say that, and I am yet to see a similar
implementation outside of extreme academia ...
--;
Jay Vaughan r&d>>music:technology:synthesizers - www.access-music.de/
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