The Quest for Low Latency

Low latency processing is usually a goal in real-time audio applications; however, it is not clear how little latency is to be considered low enough. We discuss currently available experimental data on human perception and argue that somewhat high latencies (around 20–30ms) are probably perfectly acceptable for typical musical applications. We also argue that it should be possible to accept various levels of latency on a system if we can be aware of the effects of this latency on the users of the system; therefore, we still need more experimental data on latency perception to be able to better assess the effects of latency on musical applications. Such an experi-