RME HDSPe MADI [68/72] Latency and monitoring

User's Guide HDSPe MADI © RME

30.3 Latency and Monitoring

The term Zero Latency Monitoring has been introduced by RME in 1998 for the DIGI96 series

of audio cards. It stands for the ability to pass-through the computer's input signal at the inter-

face directly to the output. Since then, the idea behind has become one of the most important

features of modern hard disk recording. In the year 2000, RME published two ground-breaking

Tech Infos on the topics Low Latency Background, which are still up-to-date: Monitoring, ZLM

and ASIO, and Buffer and Latency Jitter, both found on the RME website.

How much Zero is Zero?

From a technical view there is no zero. Even the analog pass-through is subject to phase er-

rors, equalling a delay between input and output. However, delays below certain values can

subjectively be claimed to be a zero-latency. This applies to analog routing and mixing, and in

our opinion also to RME's Zero Latency Monitoring. The term describes the digital path of the

audio data from the input of the interface to its output. RME's digital receivers operate buffered,

and together with TotalMix and the output via the transmitter cause a typical delay of 3 samples.

At 44.1 kHz this equals about 68 µs (0.000068 s), and about 15µs at 192 kHz.

Oversampling

While the delays of digital interfaces can be disregarded altogether, the analog inputs and out-

puts do cause a significant delay. Modern converter chips operate with 64 or 128 times over-

sampling plus digital filtering, in order to move the error-prone analog filters away from the au-

dible frequency range as far as possible. This typically generates a delay of one millisecond. A

playback and re-record of the same signal via DA and AD (loopback) then causes an offset of

the newly recorded track of about 2 ms.

Low Latency!

The HDSPe MADI uses a hi-class DA-converter from Cirrus Logic, offering exceptional Signal

to Noise and distortion figures and an innovative digital filter. The exact delays caused by the

DA-conversion are:

Sample frequency kHz 44.1 48 88.2 96 176.4 192

DA (10 x 1/fs) ms 0.22 0.2

DA (5 x 1/fs) ms 0.056 0.052

DA (5 x 1/fs) ms 0.028 0.026

Buffer Size (Latency)

Windows: This option found in the Settings dialog defines the size of the buffers for the audio

data used in ASIO and WDM (see chapter 11 and 13).

Mac OS X: The buffer size is defined within the application. Only some do not offer any setting.

For example iTunes is fixed to 512 samples.

General: A setting of 64 samples at 44.1 kHz causes a latency of 1.5 ms, for record and play-

back each. But when performing a digital loopback test no latency/offset can be detected. The

reason is that the software naturally knows the size of the buffers, therefore is able to position

the newly recorded data at a place equalling a latency-free system.

AD/DA Offset under ASIO and OS X: ASIO (Windows) and Core Audio (Mac OS X) allow for the

signalling of an offset value to correct buffer independent delays, like AD- and DA-conversion or

the Safety Buffer described below. An analog loopback test will then show no offset, because

the application shifts the recorded data accordingly.