{"id":19499,"date":"2014-10-28T10:51:37","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T14:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/?p=19499"},"modified":"2014-10-28T10:51:37","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T14:51:37","slug":"recording-latency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelborthwick.com\/cakewalk\/2014\/10\/28\/recording-latency\/","title":{"rendered":"Basics: Five Questions about Latency and Computer Recording"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get the lowdown on low latency, and what it means to you<\/em><\/p>\n

By Craig Anderton<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recording with computers has brought incredible power to musicians at amazing prices. However, there are some compromises\u2014such as latency.<\/em> Let\u2019s find out what causes it, how it affects you, and how to minimize it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

1. What is latency?<\/strong> When recording, a computer is often busy doing other tasks and may ignore the incoming audio for short amounts of time. This can result in audio dropouts, clicks, excessive distortion, and sometimes program crashes. To compensate, recording software like SONAR<\/a> dedicates some memory (called a sample buffer<\/em>) to store incoming audio temporarily\u2014sort of like an \u201caudio savings account.\u201d If needed, your recording program can make a \u201cwithdrawal\u201d from the buffer to keep the audio stream flowing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Latency<\/em> is \u201cgeek speak\u201d for the delay that occurs between when you play or sing a note, and what you hear when you monitor your playing through your computer\u2019s output. Latency has three main causes:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n