Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

Re: www-cycling74 wow.:)



At 1:38 PM -0800 1/21/98, Paolo Valladolid wrote:
>> Curtis Bahn wrote:
>>
>> > Also check out MSP, David Zicarelli's signal processing extensions to 
>MAX
>> > at http://www.cycling74.com.  If you have a powerpc computer you can
>>easily
>> > design custom looping and overdubbing algorithms (amoung many other
>> > things).  It's great !  Programs like MSP and LiSa are taking looping 
>away
>> > from the restrictions of commercial hardware, to a whole new level of
>> > personal sound design and performance interaction.
>> > crb

One thing kind of troubling about the computer based systems for real-time
use is the latency problems. (meaning the time it would take for audio to
be sent in and sent back out again.) On the MSP site some typical latencies
are actually listed as:

Audio input to audio output latency on a 9600/300:
         Using the Digidesign Audiomedia III:      46ms
                     Using the Sound Manager:      294ms

that's definitely in the range where you would notice it in some
situations, especially with looping and trying to maintain precise grooves.
And this is on a very fast (and expensive) system! I know that PC's suffer
from the same problem. The audio has to go through a lot of operating
system to get to where it's useable, and a lot more operating system to get
out again.

So those of you using systems like these for real-time audio I/O, how do
you deal with that? Are you able to operate it with any timing precision
for real-time audio events? And I don't mean hard disk recording where the
system has opportunities to compensate for the latency. I mean audio really
going in and out, like you might have on a typical stand alone audio
processor. Anyone?

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
http://www.annihilist.com/  | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com