Re: AW: laptop audio I/O hardware

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 7 jun 2006, at 19.21, Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill wrote:

> Which brings us to another important point: you mention that sound  
> travels
> at roughly 30cm/ms (using units I can understand ;). That means  
> that in a
> typical living room setup, the time it takes the sound to travel  
> from the
> speakers to your ear can be around 10ms. Even if you're having a
> kinda-nearfield setup, it's a little over 3ms. So something to keep  
> in mind
> here should be using headphones.


Or the opposite ;-)  This is a well known phenomenon in studios. Some  
musicians may have difficulties to play tight with headphones because  
of the short latency compared to what they are used to from playing  
live on tour (more latency on stage because of the distance to amps,  
drum kit and stage monitors). And I guess the opposite may be true  
for bedroom studio musicians; i.e. experiencing trouble with playing  
well with natural latency since they are used to headphones.

Over here I like to practice live looping two meters from the  
monitors. That distance approximately equals the normal stage  
monitoring situation.

In acoustic orchestra disciplines it has always been important for  
musicians to learn how to "play with latency", either before or after  
the real beat. The norm here is to make sure the sound from all  
instruments reach the audience at the same time. So a trumpet player  
has to play a little slow, since he is targeting the listeners  
directly with his instrument, while the french horn guys have to play  
a little more early because their instrument is targeting the ceiling  
and the audience will hear a mix of the muffled direct sound and the  
reflected sound. They all depend on the director, because timing-wise  
the sound is not accurate at the musicians individual spots. If you  
listen to a big band, choir or orchestra it's fun to walk around  
listening and notice the big differences in sound perspectives.

Greetings from Sweden

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