Latency

    Latency of the kpa, unless it has changed, is less than 5ms if I recall correctly. That is the same amount of time it takes sound to travel 5 feet. Thats additional latency to the distance delay from where you normally stand so it's like moving 5 feet further away. I am amazed how people can "feel" this! How a stadium pro rocker or a festival stage could ever play 20 to 30 feet from their stack must require amazing talent....or they just don't notice it. I don't know...Within the limits of my 25 foot cable, I don't notice when I'm closer or further apart from the volume.


    bd

    Hi music man!
    Im trying to find a music man rig, cant find any. I have the real amp but its old and broken and was thinking off sending it for repair.Kemper is almoust the real thing, its just that feel off latency that make me still want to spend money repair it.

    Quote from musicman65

    Latency of the kpa, unless it has changed, is less than 5ms if I recall correctly. That is the same amount of time it takes sound to travel 5 feet. Thats additional latency to the distance delay from where you normally stand so it's like moving 5 feet further away. I am amazed how people can "feel" this! How a stadium pro rocker or a festival stage could ever play 20 to 30 feet from their stack must require amazing talent....or they just don't notice it. I don't know...Within the limits of my 25 foot cable, I don't notice when I'm closer or further apart from the volume.


    This. I've never understood it too.


    I'm pretty sure some people (with all respect for strengdal here) talk of latency but refer to something else. As it happens for other abused terms such as aliasing and digital artefacts.
    Too many times in blind tests on forum someone has stated that the A clip suffered from digital artefacts just to discover that clip A was in fact the tube amp.

    No, I *am* talking about latency and I'm well aware that 1ms = 1ft, I respect other people's opinions on how it doesn't matter to them, but expect others to respect my opinion as well - it matters to me. And yes, I need to stand relatively close to my monitors on stage, 12ft is my limit for feeling disconnected and currently my FRFR speaker already introduces an additional 2ms of latency so every ms counts.

    The way I see it, each device that adds latency is 2-3ft I need to stand closer to my monitors, so I avoid it like the plague. At least I don't claim to hear the differences between regular and alkaline batteries :P


    EDIT: I'm already looking into a new FRFR speaker, but these things are expensive (especially in my country), and many of the current models feature DSP which makes choosing one even harder.

    Latency makes a huge difference to feel. At 10ms things start to feel like,playing with a SnapBack echo to me, at over 4ms things start to feel disconnected and somehow wrong. Telling people to stand closer to a speaker that could be pushing a lot of air to fill a club is not a sensible thing to do if you value your hearing (remember the inverse square rule applies).


    You'd be surprised at just how much latency affects the way things feel, even if you personally can't detect it as latency. When the latency on the KPA was dropped from 5ms to around 3.5ms for most patches pretty much everyone felt the difference in its feel, in how reactive and responsive and immediate it became, and more fluid and real amp like, and even to some people to the sound improved.


    High latency means I cannot use software based amp sims for anything other than reamping, it matters.

    You make an excellent point. It is a very good comparison.


    And this is not to mention that unless your tube amp is close to you on stage, there is going to be some latency, not to mention if it's miked and played through the house.


    I haven't even thought about latency with the KPA. Yes, if I go back and forth between it and a tube amp, there are various difference. Of course there are. So many variables and factors involved in this.


    Quote from Guitartone

    How come these professional musicians aren't bothered by the latency they would experience on this stage, but a guitarist sitting at home in his lounge is so bothered by the very same latency?


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    Quote from Guitartone

    How come these professional musicians aren't bothered by the latency they would experience on this stage, but a guitarist sitting at home in his lounge is so bothered by the very same latency?


    [Blocked Image: http://wfld.images.worldnow.com/images/19622286_BG1.jpg]


    Because firstly there's no latency at all for their own instrument (most of which are being held right up close to their faces), and secondly they're using a visual cue for timing (the conductor) rather than audible cues, light travels just that tiny bit faster than sound to make it all alright :P.


    If you had the timpanist playing with huge long sticks to a drum that was in the first violin's position then they'd be quite affected, trust me.


    Try playing a large stage gig without IEM's (nasty as they are) or a monitor close by. Lets turn this on it's head, tell me you feel no difference playing an amp that's on the far side of a large stage to using IEM/close monitoring, next time you're in that situation have the tech enable/disable the monitor while you're playing and see for yourself if you can discern any difference in feel. Even over a short distance I'm pretty sure for everyone they'd feel a difference, you may not hear it as an echo or disconnect, but you will notice it. Which one do you prefer?

    Edited once, last by Per ().

    for me it starts to get feeling bad at around 8 to 10 ms, thats for example when playing a softsynth the keys feel like sticking to the fingers


    playing guitar with a latency of about 10 ms is also feeling "sticky" for me


    with rapping or singing at about 5 meteres from the speakers it gets dificult (at least for rapping)


    but there seems to be a sort of threshold, meaning that from 0 to about 8 ms is don´t feel any latency, but beyond that time: boom, its there

    Quote from Deny

    No, I *am* talking about latency and I'm well aware that 1ms = 1ft, I respect other people's opinions on how it doesn't matter to them, but expect others to respect my opinion as well

    Please Deny, believe I highly respect your opinion. What I wrote is I don't understand guitar players talking of latency. There are also civil and sensitive ways of not sharing things, right? :)

    i, for one, do care about latency and i wouldn't hesitate a second to pay a couple of hundred bucks extra for a kpa that gives me latency clearly under 2ms & supports 48khz spdif (slave preferred).
    just make sure to throw in some pitch/whammy fx and a basic looper also... :whistling: