All About Latency, Pt. 1
A listener request deep dive-info and tips on latency coming at ya! If you’re using a computer to record music, you need to consider your recording system’s latency for best results, so we’re going over some info and solutions on this topic throughout this series.
What is latency?
Latency in general is the time it takes for information to move through a system. In digital audio, latency is the time it takes for an audio signal to move from the mic, through your audio interface, into your DAW, back out of your interface again, and into your headphones. It’s the time (in milliseconds), that it takes for an audio signal to move through various parts of your recording system.
Symptoms of latency issues
If your recording system’s latency is not set up correctly, here’s some behavior you might notice:
-an echo or delay in your headphones while you’re recording
-noticeable time delays in either your recording chain, or your monitoring loop, or both.
So, you swear you thought you played that guitar lick perfectly in time with the drums while you were recording it, but when you play it back it’s not lined up anymore.
Or, you might notice a time delay between when you pluck a string on your guitar, and when you hear that sound played back in your headphones.
This kind of time delay will make it super hard to record anything accurately, especially overdubs or punch-ins on a track, and can really ruin the whole home recording experience. So, you want to know how to troubleshoot these types of latency problems.
Quick tips to troubleshoot latency problems in your home studio
1) check/adjust your input and output audio buffers in your DAW’s audio settings. try to get your round trip latency no higher than 50ms, ideally in the 10-25ms range.
2) When using the input/output audio buffers, if you can’t get your latency low enough to be useable without also introducing digital distortion into your recordings, here’s some additional tips:
3) Try freeing up computing resources by using less effects.
4) Try recording at a lower sample rate (16 bit 44.1kHz is just fine for demos and any rough stuff you’re planning to re-record).
5) Using a faster computer with at least 16 GB of RAM will also help with this.
6) Try enabling low latency mode in your DAW, if that’s an option you have.
7) Make sure “plugin delay compensation” is enabled in your DAW. This setting is usually on by default in modern programs.
8) Try using direct monitoring from your audio interface. Even cheap interfaces usually have this nowadays.
To do this, first turn off software monitoring on the record track in your DAW. Then, flip on the direct monitoring switch located on your interface. You should now hear only the raw output of the mic in your ears, with no more latency delay.
We’ll be digging deeper into each of these in the coming weeks!
Stay tuned!
