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Re: Products, Services, and Looping Gear "Packages"



On 8 aug 2006, at 18.45, Jeff Larson wrote:

> I find that most of the time, people that complain about laptop
> latency haven't tuned it properly.  On a modern laptop with ASIO
> drivers, you can expect to achieve latency on the order of 5
> milliseconds
> and sometimes lower.


I have been playing a lot live, so I can adopt to latency as a  
musician (differently sized stages, different back-line etc). But I  
do have a problem with latency in laptop systems and this problem has  
to do with "bad sound" when my direct signal is being mixed with the  
latency affected sound. I.e. the good old "phasing issue". Just  
posting this for the record, to help people speak about the same  
thing - or realize they don't ;-))  For my own praxis the latency  
problem is easily fixed by not mixing any delayed instrument with my  
direct instrument sound. Only the loops pass by through the laptop  
and since I use Mobius they will be compensated for the short time it  
takes the audio interface hardware to digitize my analog instrument  
input signal (AD conversion latency) and shuffle it into Mobius as  
well for the delay caused by the opposite process (DA conversion)  
that makes all that digital looping madness analog again so speakers  
will be able to move air accordingly.

Then there is also the personal taste about different instruments. I  
have a red Line-6 POD and it has a quite uncomfortable latency, so  
"hardware" can definitely be slow. When I was going to buy a guitar  
amp I picked the little 2x10" solid state Gallien Krüger only because  
it answered back quicker "by air" to what I was feeling by steel and  
wood with my fingers. It felt good to not have to adapt my brain too  
much to the latency I now experience with my fat tube amp top  
(although that one sounds great). I think this is a matter of taste;  
I also like it very much to play tenor sax because I can directly  
feel the note pitch and attack with my belly (no latency guaranteed  
since I'm quite skinny ;-). And I like playing the flute because the  
sound source is then located close to my ears, as is the mic that is  
providing the electronic signal for amplification. You can definitely  
learn to play with latency, pro musicians do that every day in all  
the symphonic orchestras. IMHO it's just not very fun ;-)

Greetings from Sweden

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