Page 1 of 1

Latency

Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2014 12:44 pm
by romarr
Hi there,
Just came across this (reddit maybe). How are people finding the latency (ie when you hit a "air drum" are you hearing the sound immediatly or is there a small delay)?

Thanks and great work to the devs ... quite excited about this as an ex drummer turned electronic music producer

Re: Latency

Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2014 3:06 pm
by Pingo
I find the Latency very acceptable. you'll have to experiment with the options " beginner " , " proficient " and / or " expert " to find the best balance.
Using Aerodrums for over a month now, would not want to miss it anymore !!!! double my practice time, early mornings and late @ night

Paul aka Pingo, a drumeo student. www.youtube.com/user/pingo6507

Re: Latency

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2014 10:59 pm
by bangonthedrums
For playing along to a track, rehearsing on your own, latency is perfectly fine.
But playing live with my band, trying to set the tempo, it did become noticeable and I had to concentrate hard to play ahead of the beat or else the tempo would drop.
I don't know if that's affected by the speed of my computer, and of course ymmv...

Re: Latency

Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 6:12 pm
by Sipaliwini
If the indicator on the top left stays green, then your computer's speed is enough and should not affect latency.
It should not be perceptible if the conditions are good, unless your sound perception is far above average.

Here is what I mean by good conditions:
1) Your computer's sound card allows for audio playback with a buffer size at 128 samples or below (the lower the better) (we haven't come across any laptops from 2009 and later that can't do this).
2) If using speakers, make sure they are not far away from you: speakers placed at 2m from your seat will add about 6ms of perceived latency (which is more than the difference between a 128 and a 256 samples audio buffer).
3) If using Aerodrums' sound (the default), you have used Aerodrums "Latency" menu to minimize latency.
4) If drumming through a sampler via MIDI, you have set the audio settings of your sampler's host to minimize latency.

Bangonthedrums, I am wondering if you are affected by 3) when playing live with your band. Are the main speakers far away? If so, are you using a monitor speaker near you, or some headphones?

Re: Latency

Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 9:18 am
by bangonthedrums
I was using the original version of aerodrums that shipped in the box back in february or so this year, and i'm not sure it had a latency setting, but i would have reduced it to the minimum possible.
I'm trying to get the latest version working on a new macbook, so i'll certainly try again with my band once that's working.

Regarding speaker distance, no they were very close. I wasn't playing a huge arena unfortunately, just a small rehearsal studio :-)
I think the speakers would have to be 100ft away to have the same amount of latency that the playstation eye camera causes, but it's a good point - always worth having a monitor speaker.

Re: Latency

Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 12:07 pm
by Sipaliwini
Ben, I don't want to nitpick but 100ft is 88ms at the speed of sound. It's an order of magnitude above what Aerodrums can do.
I know it sounds weird, but having speakers 1ft away instead of 6ft does make a difference. This is because all the different sources of latency add up, so that the extra 4.5ms this represents can bring the latency above the threshold where you can perceive it.

I'll be around in the other thread to help with using Aerodrums on your Mac.

Re: Latency

Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 12:53 pm
by bangonthedrums
Apologies - my maths was wrong. Thanks for the correction.
I think I'm genuinely surprised how much difference a few feet make...