Re: Laptops and Latency...

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 9 maj 2006, at 02.32, Steve Lawson wrote:

> The lovely Jeff said about working with MAX/MSP on a laptop -
> >>still loving it, and latency not bothering me at all.  
> Particularly since leaving the m-audio interface behind.....<<
>
> one of the major differences between your music and mine is that  
> your sound source is acoustic - so your relationship with latency  
> is going to be very different in that you're already dealing with  
> two separate sounds - the acoustic one and the processed one. A  
> 7-10 millisecond latency on that is going to be pretty hard to pick  
> up, I'd have thought...
>
> For me as a bassist, especially when playing percussively, I find  
> the disconnect that I feel when presented with that kind of latency  
> is just nasty. I could deal with it if I was using the direct  
> monitoring thing through the soundcard, but that would then mean  
> that I'd need an external processor as well, and would defeat the  
> point of using a laptop. :o)


I agree with Steve here that latency is a universal no-no. I can deal  
with latency if I'm playing with a drummer on a big stage, but only  
if I have the drums are taken out of the stage monitoring system OR  
turned up so loud that I don't hear the drums acoustically. That kind  
of musical latency I can adjust to because it is the same all the  
time. But I can not adapt to the latency of computer software  
monitoring.

My way of dealing with this when using a laptop for looping is  
simple: I never play my instrument through the laptop. I bypass it  
and play directly out through the PA, while splitting the signal and  
sending one part into the software looper. With Mobius this is easy  
because you can turn off the "audio through-put", so the only sound  
that is coming out of the laptop is what I have looped - and Mobius  
does correct the loops for the latency so it will loop back exactly  
as I played it.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)
http://tinyurl.com/fauvm (podcast)