Quote:
Originally Posted by drBill  It's interesting that some seem to find monitoring thru the AD/DA process perfectly acceptable. My question to you guys - are you doing rhythm sections where groove and "feel" is paramount and where live musicians have the opportunity to blame the machine instead of themselves for the groove not happening??? |
I always use 128 of buffer size and never received any complain from the musicians.
Anyway here is an article from the net:
The situations below all assume a 44.1 KHz or 48 KHz sampling rate.
[top]HWB=64: too small to matter much
If your HWB is 64, and you're monitoring through headphones, then the latency is the same as if you were monitoring a zero-latency mix through speakers and sitting with your ears 7 to 9 feet from the speaker cones. If you're monitoring through speakers, and sitting 3' away, HWB=64 increases latency to the equivalent of sitting 10-12' away. 7-12 feet is a pretty typical distance for musicians to sit from speakers in a control room. It's closer than they might be to each other on a large stage. It's much closer than the most distant members of a symphony orchestra are from each other.
[top]HWB=128: perfectly workable
A HWB of 128 doubles headphone latency to the equivalent of sitting about 12 or 13 feet from speakers -- still not far from normal for a situation where three or four studio musicians are packed into a medium-sized control room. Monitoring through speakers at 5' with HWB=128, the effective latency is like being 17-18' from the speakers instead of 5' - about the distance some band mates on a large stage might be from each other. 12 feet or so works OK for most musicians, if they know to expect it. 18' is beginning to be a stretch if a tight groove is required. It can be overcome, but it's a difficulty, no way around it. You definitely want headphones at this latency.
[top]HWB=256: difficult but not impossible
A HWB setting of 256, through headphones, is like sitting 19 or 20 feet from speakers, pretty far for a tight groove. Classical musicians should be used to such latencies, and jazz cats might be, but pop and rock musicians are going to need some time to get accustomed to that much delay. As long as they're hearing a good strong click that is not subject to the latency, they should be able to lock onto that with practice, and not be thrown too badly, very often. You definitely don't want anybody monitoring through speakers with this buffer setting if you can help it.
A HWB of 512 drives you up to the equivalent of sitting over 30 feet from speakers, which would make it difficult to stay in the pocket of almost any groove. It still wouldn't be a problem for someone playing glissed diamonds on a guitar or playing an instrument with a relatively soft attack, though. You don't want to track at 512 if you can help it unless the style or instrumentation is very timing-tolerant.
HWB=1024, of course, is extremely tough for tracking almost anything where instruments have to stay in time with each other if they're monitoring through PT