Audio Latency Discussion Thread

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kyube
Posts: 545
Joined: 29 Jan 2018, 12:03

Audio Latency Discussion Thread

Post by kyube » 19 Feb 2025, 17:22

Greetings everyone,
A small group of testers and me have accumulated a small data set of different hardware & software combinations in the pursuit of measuring the latency of (presumably) the WASAPI shared mode that Windows employs. The test used is called Superpowered Web Browser Latency Test
Here are the results: http:// rentry.co/ALTResults (connect the link together)
I wanted to share this to a broader community, so we can test more combinations.
Perhaps explore different ideas & different testing methods as well.

These results are distinctly different from the ASIO API, as most games do not employ it.

A video on this topic:
phpBB [video]


Fortnite & OW1's audio latency seemed to benefit from higher FPS, while CS:GO was not affected.
I don't know which APIs these games use (XAudio2, WASAPI etc.)
I believe CS2 is using WASAPI shared mode? Would be good if we could find a way to confirm which audio API's FPS games use.

For reference, take a look at this study: https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3678299.3678331 in regards to audio latency
A great article that Chief Blurbusters wrote on this topic: https://blurbusters.com/human-reflex-in ... tion-time/

Death_Lotus
Posts: 9
Joined: 29 May 2017, 12:09

Re: Audio Latency Discussion Thread

Post by Death_Lotus » 23 Apr 2025, 14:51

Hey,

Do you have a Discord server or any more resources?
I tried to meassure the latency of my Soundblaster AE-9, but I have some problems.
When using either Chromium, Chrome or Edge, I cannot safely reproduce my measurements.
Every time I get either different latencies after a reboot, or I cannot measure at all, because of the warning: Too much variance balbalba try a quiet enivornment.
However, I see in my sound settings, that the usb mic is only detecting the sound from the headphones, not any other sounds.
About the different latencies:
I meassured for my toslink output a latency of ~50ms, after a reboot I measured ~120ms.
Is there anything I'm doing wrong?
I also tried to connect my USB Mic to different ports, but it did not help.

tattoo
Posts: 9
Joined: 15 Jun 2022, 16:55

Re: Audio Latency Discussion Thread

Post by tattoo » 24 Apr 2025, 04:23

i was about to make a thread about this,i was plaing with stuff last night to help the floaty,microstuter isue,so what i did is: desabled from device manager all the stuff related to sound,exept the wireless headphones,then to control panel/sound,and lovered the values to
2 channnel,16bit,48000hz... and in helped like a lot,more snappy mouse and no audio cracks and stutter,do the same for the microphone!

User avatar
kyube
Posts: 545
Joined: 29 Jan 2018, 12:03

Re: Audio Latency Discussion Thread

Post by kyube » 24 Apr 2025, 08:26

Death_Lotus wrote:
23 Apr 2025, 14:51
Hey,

Do you have a Discord server or any more resources?
I tried to meassure the latency of my Soundblaster AE-9, but I have some problems.
When using either Chromium, Chrome or Edge, I cannot safely reproduce my measurements.
Every time I get either different latencies after a reboot, or I cannot measure at all, because of the warning: Too much variance balbalba try a quiet enivornment.
However, I see in my sound settings, that the usb mic is only detecting the sound from the headphones, not any other sounds.
About the different latencies:
I meassured for my toslink output a latency of ~50ms, after a reboot I measured ~120ms.
Is there anything I'm doing wrong?
I also tried to connect my USB Mic to different ports, but it did not help.
I've read of a few users experiencing this issue, but I haven't been able to pinpoint what exactly causes it
My assumption is that it's some browser permission issue and/or microphone placement relative to headphones / audio source

Interesting that the AE-9 can also get ~50ms on toslink, this wasn't reported before.

I'm usually active in the Latency & Gaming discord, you can contact me there or DMing me on discord (same name as here)

tattoo wrote:
24 Apr 2025, 04:23
i was about to make a thread about this,i was plaing with stuff last night to help the floaty,microstuter isue,so what i did is: desabled from device manager all the stuff related to sound,exept the wireless headphones,then to control panel/sound,and lovered the values to
2 channnel,16bit,48000hz... and in helped like a lot,more snappy mouse and no audio cracks and stutter,do the same for the microphone!
This does not seem related to this topic, this reads to me as if you have a different HW and/or SW issue at play.

Bobo
Posts: 111
Joined: 05 Jun 2018, 11:44

Re: Audio Latency Discussion Thread

Post by Bobo » 24 Apr 2025, 08:35

in my setup, i get background noise if i use 16/44100, and if i switch to 24/48000, it`s dead silent.
this happens with any device that i use and all the headphones/iems that i use.

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