X-Git-Url: http://shamusworld.gotdns.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=blobdiff_plain;f=include%2Flatency-and-latency-compensation.html;h=62009f24d66c3bcf862f6080c72315427ec95e1c;hb=ecdab5aaa7d63e25b7dcb00c4b47de1eefbff9dd;hp=c688393932b10e9825efcb9ab1aea42b3ebd2f29;hpb=88d6f39b5f8b0f791b6833bb1512aa774b59d4f8;p=ardour-manual diff --git a/include/latency-and-latency-compensation.html b/include/latency-and-latency-compensation.html index c688393..62009f2 100644 --- a/include/latency-and-latency-compensation.html +++ b/include/latency-and-latency-compensation.html @@ -83,7 +83,7 @@ Low latency is not always a feature you want to have. It comes with a couple of drawbacks: the most prominent is increased power consumption because the CPU needs to process many small chunks of audio data, - it is constantly active and can not enter power-saving mode (think fan-noise). + it is constantly active and can not enter power-saving mode (think fan noise). Since each application that is part of the signal chain must run in every audio cycle, low-latency systems will undergocontext switches between applications more often, which incur a significant overhead. @@ -95,7 +95,7 @@

Playing virtual instruments

A large delay between the pressing of the keys and the sound the instrument - produces will throw-off the timing of most instrumentalists (save church + produces will throw off the timing of most instrumentalists (save church organists, whom we believe to be awesome latency-compensation organic systems.)

Software audio monitoring

@@ -132,19 +132,19 @@ played back is internally aligned with the sound that is being recorded.

- This is where latency-compensation comes into play. There are two ways to + This is where latency compensation comes into play. There are two ways to compensate for latency in a DAW, read-ahead and write-behind. The DAW starts playing a bit early (relative to the playhead), so that when the sound arrives at the speakers a short time later, it is exactly aligned with the material that is being recorded. - Since we know that play-back has latency, the incoming audio can be delayed + Since we know that playback has latency, the incoming audio can be delayed by the same amount to line things up again.

As you may see, the second approach is prone to various implementation issues regarding timecode and transport synchronization. Ardour uses read-ahead to compensate for latency. The time displayed in the Ardour clock corresponds - to the audio-signal that you hear on the speakers (and is not where Ardour + to the audio signal that you hear on the speakers (and is not where Ardour reads files from disk).