[PD-ot] how low (latency) can you go?

Mathieu Bouchard matju at artengine.ca
Mon Dec 18 13:34:08 CET 2006


On Sun, 17 Dec 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> They also concluded that latency tolerance is dependant on tempo (slower 
> tempo equals higher tolerance), and on instrumentation. For example, if 
> a synthesizer pad type sound is used in ensemble performance, the

That could be the (Heisenberg-like) uncertainty principle at work: slow 
tempos are a kind of very low frequency: 60 bpm = 1 Hz; the lower the 
frequency, the more time it takes to figure out that an event occurred.

However, that principle only works if it only involves sounds of that 
frequency. Even though the tempo can be thought of as a frequency, it 
would mean that a repeated measure can be thought of as a periodic sound 
that has certain harmonics, and those harmonics have very high indices, 
unlike the harmonics that dominate the timbre of single notes.

Any kind of harmonics allow us to guess a lower-frequency phenomenon (or 
have the impression that there is one...) before it can be perceived 
directly (or even without it being ever perceived directly...).

(I'm mostly saying that from a math/physics background, without much care 
for the actual psycho-acoustics)

  _ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ...
| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada


More information about the PD-ot mailing list