[sdiy] Atari latency, was:Camel*ont* soft Da synth!

[Seb Francis]

Ingo Debus wrote:
> Hm, what *is* latency here? How is it defined?
>
> On a (hardware or software) synth, latency is the time between the 
> arrival of the MIDI message and the actual starting of the sound. But 
> we're talking about the Atari ST, thus certainly not about a soft 
> synth, correct? What does latency mean for a MIDI sequencer? The 
> difference between the time stamp value recorded along with a MIDI 
> event and the actual time when this event occurred? As long as this 
> 'latency' is constant, it could easily be compensated by the sequencer 
> program.
> And even if it couldn't, what's the difference between "tight timing" 
> and "low MIDI latency" then?
>

I guess what is meant is the time between the MIDI data being received 
by the MIDI input, passed through the sequencer (and assigned to 
appropriate thru channel & port), and retransmitted out of the MIDI output.

This seems to me the only MIDI latency that actually matters.  Anything 
else can be easily compensated for in software as you say.  Personally 
I've never had a problem with latency on the PC - I can't perceive any 
delay from pressing a key on my MIDI (or USB for that matter) keyboard 
and hearing the sound come from my analog (0 latency * :) modular.

* Well ok, you could say my modular has 1ms latency as this is the time 
taken to receive the MIDI note-on message by the MIDI->CV converter.

Seb