How To Fix Audio Interface Latency

hi and welcome to doctor mix today we will explain audio interface latency what is it why it happens and how to reduce it in order to make your recording system more efficient and responsive for music production and it would mean the world to me right now if you would subscribe and hit that Bell button so that we can keep on growing this channel and give you great videos like the one coming up so let's start by understanding what latency means in engineering the definition of latency is a time interval between stimulation and response in a recording system this time interval means a delay between a piece of audio being played and its sound being reproduced by the speakers this problem is particularly evident while recording so why does latency happen to understand the problem you have to follow the signal path of a recording system the instrument or voice goes into the audio interface and transformed into a digital signal by an analog to digital converter or ADC then the signal gets carried by the driver which is a small piece of software into the CPU of the computer the signal then comes out of the CPU again into the digital to analog converter or DAC of the audio interface and gets reproduced by the speakers in addition remember that drivers are created by developers for Windows whilst in most cases Apple's own core audio device is used for Mac this means that the signal goes through a few layers of processing during its round-trip and as a consequence a time delay is introduced this delay may vary depending on the speed of the computer's CPU the quality of the audio interface and connection type firewire USB Thunderbolt etc the compatibility of the driver with the operating system and the da W the amount of data buffer selected on the da w now the data buffer is a portion of memory used to momentarily store the audio which gives the computer time to process the audio itself and so to ensure a stable stream of sound the buffer is measured in number of samples 48 64 96 and so on the larger the buffer the more time the computer has to react to the audio that's being processed this extra time allows for more plugins to be used however this does mean a slower responsiveness of the whole system but there are many situations where indeed a larger buffer is necessary for example mixing mastering or live recording these are all scenarios where stability is more important than low latency also you want to remember that general-purpose computers are often busy doing other tasks so without the use of a sample buffer background actions such as on-screen graphics virus checking mail checking internet networking file-sharing apps can all interrupt the processing of audio leading to cliques pops and dropouts so how can the latency problem be resolved for recording here are five solutions from the cheapest to the most expensive one reduce the amount of buffer on your music software and don't use plugins in the recording path while recording make the buffer as low as possible just make sure you don't get any clicks and pops but as low as possible to check the compatibility of your computer operating system drivers and da W plug-in updates three use an external analog mixer and bypass the software monitoring all together so that you use the audio interface to only record the material and you leave the monitoring duties to the mixer for by an audio interface that features direct monitoring some of them have a simple pot to balance between the source and the computer some of them have a software control panel to manage direct Hardware routing five by a faster computer and interface to process your audio faster lastly one word of warning latency times can be construed to look superior than they actually are so don't trust all video tests that you see on youtube but consider the factors at play which are number of audio channels used number of plugins sample rate bit depth amount of memory and processing power of your computer the ultimate way to make sure your signal is a hundred percent intact is to perform a null test by flipping the face on the audio coming into the interface against what's coming out of it keep an eye on this channel as will soon demonstrate null testing and show you some tools to monitor interface stability I hope this video was useful to you if so subscribe and hit that Bell notification button keep on making great music stay inspired and see you next time

Channel: Doctor Mix

Views: 312,084

Keywords: Audio Latency, Interface, problems

Id: 6sCLzzZhdfQ

Length: 5min 46sec (346 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 31 2018