MOTU 4pre - Reducing Monitoring Latency; Overview of Monitoring Latency

CHAPTER
45
8 Reducing Monitoring Latency
OVERVIEW
Monitoring latency is that slight delay you hear
when you run an input signal through your host
audio software. For example, you might hear it
when you drive a live mic input signal through an
amp modeling plug-in running in your audio
sequencer.
This delay is caused by the amount of time it takes
for audio to make the entire round trip through
your computer, from when it first enters an 4pre
input, passes through the 4pre hardware into the
computer, through your host audio software, and
then back out to an 4pre output.
If you don’t need to process a live input with
plug-ins, the easiest way to avoid monitoring
latency is to use the 4pre’s CueMix digital mixer to
patch the input directly to your monitor outs via
the 4pre audio hardware. For details, see “CueMix
hardware monitoring” on page 48.
If you do need to process a live input with plug-ins,
or if you are playing virtual instruments live
through your 4pre audio hardware, you can
significantly reduce latency — and even make it
completely inaudible, regardless of what host audio
application software you use. This chapter explains
how.
It is important to note that monitoring delay has no
effect on when audio data is recorded to disk or
played back from disk. Actual recording and
playback is extremely precise.
Monitoring live input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Adjusting the audio I/O buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Lower latency versus higher CPU overhead . . . . . . . . . . 48
Transport responsiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Effects processing and automated mixing . . . . . . . . . . . 48
CueMix hardware monitoring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Three methods for controlling CueMix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Controlling CueMix from the front panel. . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Using the CueMix FX application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Controlling CueMix from your audio software . . . . . . . 49