Latency is the delay between when an input signal enters and when it “reaches” an output. latency audio interface affects how much latency is present in your recording.
There are two main factors that affect latency: hardware latency, which means latency of your sound device, and software latency, which is the latency introduced by your computer’s operating system itself or a specific software you use to record sound.
I will focus on hardware latency because it has a greater impact on recording time. It is measured in milliseconds (ms), where 1ms = 0.001 seconds. The lower this number, the better for your recordings!
The most common drivers that cause high latency are ASIO and Core Audio, but they can be used in combination with latency-reducing devices, called latency audio interfaces.
These latency audio interfaces are usually USB-based and have a latency of 0-2ms, so they can save you crucial recording time!
Although I haven’t used them personally, sound cards like the Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 or the Presonus Audiobox 44VSL should also reduce latency significantly.
If you’re looking for an interface to share between recording your instruments + vocals at the same time, then look no further than Behringer Xenyx 502! It is cheap (~$30), has 5 inputs that are all controllable via volume knobs (no need to adjust each input’s level separately), and latency is 2ms.
The type of latency audio interface is:
- USB latency audio interface
- PCI latency audio Interface
- Firewire latency audio interface
USB latency audio interface how it works: -The latency in a modern computer running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux is quite low.
On Windows, you shouldn’t see any latency (or at least not more than 5ms). On Mac OS X and some versions of Linux, like Ubuntu 9.04 and later, the default audio engine has very low latency.
