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

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Dec 18, 2006, at 1:16 PM, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:

> Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>
>> On Dec 18, 2006, at 4:59 AM, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> he gradually became louder in order to minimize the latency (with
>>> physical wind instruments this helps), and after 1 hour of  
>>> playing he
>>> almost collapsed (ok, that's a bit exaggerated)
>>
>> I don't doubt that it was fatiguing to play that instrument.  But  
>> do you
>> have any specific data that shows that the latency was the source  
>> of the
>> problem?  My guess is that the reduction of feedback is essential  
>> part
>> of this.  I think that a system with so little feedback will be
>> fatiguing to play no matter how low the latency.
>
> he is used to play his MIDI wind-controller for years.
>
> he kept complaining about the (increased) latency during all  
> rehearsals.
>
> i have no reason to believe that he lied to me, when he said he had
> seriously more problems on the system which added more latency.
>
> probably he was just in the "superhuman mode", but honestly i doubt  
> this.
>
> 64k are still enough..

Ah ok, that explains it.  So he was used to the MIDI wind controller,  
and you presented him with a different one, with different latency.   
This is the case of the skilled musician sensitive to subtle  
differences that I mentioned in the beginning of this discussion.  So  
I think here it is the change in latency that is the more important  
factor rather than purely the larger latency.  I think you would also  
get a similar experience if you were skilled with a high latency  
instrument and you were presented with a low latency version of the  
same thing.

Believe me, I am not saying that you shouldn't be working on  
developing lower latency hardware and software.  I think that is  
valuable research.  What I have a problem with is the common belief  
that if your system has more than 10ms of latency, its unusable as a  
real instrument.  That is just plainly untrue, and many physical,  
traditional instruments have much larger latencies, violin being a  
good example.

So if you are interested in the question of how to create low-latency  
systems, like many here are, please continue to work on that.  But if  
you are interested in making music, stop worrying about latency and  
learn to play your instrument.  Unless you have a really crappy sound  
card like my ooold Thinkpad.  It had 850ms of latency, so yeah, that  
was limiting. :)

.hc


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