The chance of zero latency

[Ast3rix]

Is there any chance we will see a zero latency Ableton in our life times? I was hoping that Ableton would be the first to claim zero latency. No adjusting buffer sizes and turning off monitoring or spending excessive money on analog summing gear.

[Abdul Bahi]

turn the monitoring option to off on the channel (midi).

[[jur]]

It's physically impossible to have something zero latency.

[jestermgee]

You probably need to do some research into how digital audio works and the reason why you will never see zero latency under the current laws of physics.

[ObtuseMoose]

Fun fact: if you play a synth (or any instrument) through an amp and are 10 feet away from the speaker, you've got almost 9 ms of latency between the time you hit a key and when you hear the sound, just due to the speed of sound in air. (Plus or minus depending on air temperature, altitude, etc.)

--
Moose

[Tone Deft]

Fun fact: if you play a synth (or any instrument) through an amp and are 10 feet away from the speaker, you've got almost 9 ms of latency between the time you hit a key and when you hear the sound

9mS of latency at 48kHz is 432 samples.

432 samples = 9mS * 48kHz

a buffer size of 1024 doesn't seem so bad. latency under 20mS works for me, under ~13mS and I CANNOT tell the difference.

one thing I love about audio is learning the many flaws and finding what's good enough for me. audio in general and the sense of hearing are very flawed. zero latency is the wrong battle to fight.

[jlgrimes]

Is there any chance we will see a zero latency Ableton in our life times? I was hoping that Ableton would be the first to claim zero latency. No adjusting buffer sizes and turning off monitoring or spending excessive money on analog summing gear.

Impossible but it is totally possible to have minimal latency that isnt interfering with performance.


Focusrite Scarletts do decently for me but I'm sure there is better stuff out there if you spend more and do better research.

Low latency has more to do with audio interface than Ableton anyways.

RME stuff is supposed to have very low latency although I haven't personally tried them.

[[jur]]

Another very useful important bit to reduce the amount of added latency as much as possible is to use (only) Live's native devices.
This can make of world of differences. Plus you'll soon realize that you don't really need much 3rd party plugins, except for their nice GUI, so you could sell them and make bit of room on your hard drive.

[evon]

Without latency, I believe there would be no music. No depth. The optimal latency is what makes audio music to our ears IMHO.

[TLW]

RME stuff is supposed to have very low latency although I haven't personally tried them.

In a project that’s purely audio with no plugins in it I can consistently and reliably use my RME UFX at 32 sample latency. Since I tend to use delays in Live and need to hear what they’re doing while recording I generally use 64 or 128 sample buffers at 44.1KHz.

Zero latency is absolutely impossible. Processing 0s and 1s takes time and there’s no way round that. Even RME’s convertors need a very few milliseconds to do the conversion so even “direct monitoring” through an interface isn’t actually zero latency unless the internal monitoring path completely bypasses the convertors. Even digital guitar pedals which usually have very good latency performance can stack up noticable latency if you chain enough of them in series.

There are surprisingly few convertor chips in use - the RME UFX uses the same digital->audio output side chip as some Presonus interfaces. Better interfaces tend to have better pre-amps, better analogue components and better circuit designs which result in less distortion, less crosstalk and lower noise floors, but as with all things there’s a point where you have to spend lots more money to get a small increase in quality.

The trick with latency is to lower it to the point you don’t notice it - which varies from person to person - and hope the computer and DAW are stable at that setting.

[Stefan Jantschek]

Plus you'll soon realize that you don't really need much 3rd party plugins, except for their nice GUI, so you could sell them and make bit of room on your hard drive.

Wow, a through ball for getting off topic now.
Assuming you are not too ironic,
even though I honestly wish these words could be true, I am still not convinced.
Just take that little time and check it out yourself.
Take Wavetable, take its archetype Serum.
Pitch both of them down to maximum, play the lowest possible key.
You will soon realize, this juicy, squelchy sounds you´ll get from Serum cannot be done even nearly.

And even if I throw the whole possibilities of AL10 in the battlefield, I am still not able to create
the legendary wave sequence sounds of Korgs Wavestation.
Try It, I am higly interested in your research.

That perspective makes it more obvious why some devices are great workhorses, while others are
legends, no matter of GUIs and marketing.
It is how they behave in the extremes, the unconventional use.
And that´s a path, Ableton has slowed down a bit these days, isn´t it?

Maybe we could move to a new Topic "The Limits of Live 10 Native Devices"

Greets,
*S.

[[jur]]

No Stephan I’m serious and I’m not off topic.
Live devices (almost) don’t add latency, and yeah they work great. You noticed that I said you don’t need “much” 3rd party plugins. Live is missing a very few devices like dynamic equalization or a good amp simulation ( I mean one good for realistic guitar sounds, I do use Amp but not when I want something “real”).
I do sound to picture, some of my work goes to the TV, others were on bigger screens, and nobody never noticed or complained that I use EQ8 instead of fabfilter proQ.
The fact that I don’t like using PT can be a source of complains though, but THAT is off topic

[[jur]]

Btw, I absolutely love Wavetable lowest notes, that’s where it shines the most to my tastes at least.
Now if you want to recreate a Serum vibe with it you’d need some effect devices, Serum sound is highly dependent on its Fx chain I think. Plus it’s crazy filters... and I’m on your side here, creating such crazy filters with equalizers in Live won’t get near to Serum ones. But that’s also the fun part imho.
Btw 2, I usually don’t try to go off-topic on the forum, I’m not payed for this!

[Stefan Jantschek]

No Stephan I’m serious and I’m not off topic.
Live devices (almost) don’t add latency, and yeah they work great. You noticed that I said you don’t need “much” 3rd party plugins. Live is missing a very few devices like dynamic equalization or a good amp simulation ( I mean one good for realistic guitar sounds, I do use Amp but not when I want something “real”).
I do sound to picture, some of my work goes to the TV, others were on bigger screens, and nobody never noticed or complained that I use EQ8 instead of fabfilter proQ.
The fact that I don’t like using PT can be a source of complains though, but THAT is off topic

Jur, we can find a lot of accordance here.
I love Live devices for all of the abilities you mentioned here.
Also soundwise, I never had the need to use something else than EQ8, I can even live with the Amp sim and I honestly love the Convolution Revs for my whole production.

Due to my sound-design backrounds almost three decades ago, I can´t confirm your second posting.
Don´t get me wrong here, i do love Wavetable for what it can do.
But we need to be honest about the limits.
I am talking about the plain source of sound, only oscillator based. Nothing about filters, FX-treatments and GUIs.
And when I push Wavetable to it´s limits, higest or lowest possible note plus PB 24 up and down, there´s a lot of stuff happening that shouldn´t be there.
Shure we´re coming closer to individual preferences here, I did, for instance, not spend that much attention
on sound artefacts of guitar amp simulations.

And that´s why I choose the second example, Korg Wavestation.
In all my years of sound creation I could not find anyone, who was able to create WS wavesequencing within Live. Every possible workaround allowed.
I am still waiting.
Until then, I must use the "slightly" outdated samples from 1994 contained in the Wavestation VSTI.

So agreed, we don´t need much, but a few...


Greets
*S.

[Ast3rix]

[/quote]Impossible but it is totally possible to have minimal latency that isnt interfering with performance.


Focusrite Scarletts do decently for me but I'm sure there is better stuff out there if you spend more and do better research.

Low latency has more to do with audio interface than Ableton anyways.

RME stuff is supposed to have very low latency although I haven't personally tried them.
[/quote]

Nothing is impossible... Apple figured it out. I have spent some deep inspection time with Logic and Apple has done some very interesting work on the core audio section of Logic. It is basically latency free. My UAD Apollo works fine in it and I can record live instruments without having to adjust my buffer settings all day long. I keep my buffer at 512 any lower and I'm just not happy with the quality. I have been digging into Studio One 5 lately as well and they have done a lot of work on the core audio section as well. I only have latency issues when I'm using Ableton. Today I reset Ableton back to factory. I noticed that my plugins are now loading faster... so there may have been some issues with my config. I also notice a little bit better latency performance. I didn't have to use the external audio feature which uses UAD's dsp and taps into the realtime engine. So I'm doing further research with my setup to see if I can get my template to be cleaner. I'm tire of having this latency problem and having people tell me it's the buffer when I know it's not....