Next up in the latency/jitter testing is Live!

If you don’t understand what this is, please read the introduction post (This article is being updated if/when changes are made!).

Other parts in this series:

Contents

Introduction

Read the introduction post. I have updated this post since it was originally published.

For Live I used Sampler.

I did not locate any settings that changed the behaviour, so there are only 3 tests.

Reminder, don’t trust dweebs on the internet. Do the tests yourself, or at least double check my data.

64 sample buffer

Reported Latency

  • In - 4.58ms
  • Out - 4.35ms
  • Total - 8.94ms (sic)

64 sample buffer

Live - 64 Sample Buffer (Video)

256 sample buffer

Reported Latency

  • In - 8.58ms
  • Out - 8.35ms
  • Total - 16.9ms (sic)

256 sample buffer

Live - 256 Sample Buffer (Video)

1024 sample buffer

Reported Latency

  • In - 24.6ms
  • Out - 24.4ms
  • Total - 48.9ms (sic)

1024 sample buffer

Live - 1024 Sample Buffer (Video)

Data

Here is a csv of all the data, including the config files used to plot it using deltafinder.

Live data

Conclusion

  • Live exhibits very minimal (likely none) MIDI->Audio playback Jitter.
    • I thought that perhaps the ~4 sample variance was an artifact of measuring, but even when measuring at 1ghz scope sample rate and manually checking results, the results were the same.
    • It could be a byproduct of sampling, Sampler, or the audio device, or Operating system or Live itself. I would need to do different tests to narrow down the source.
    • I suspect it’s a byproduct of the sampling processes, and I feel comfortable saying that Live has no Jitter.
  • Live exhibits Moderate Latency. It appears that the reported latency in the context of MIDI->Audio is 50% greater than reported.

Meta

This post took:

  • 1 hour to capture signals and graph them.
  • 1 hour to verify results.
  • 1 hour to write the article.