Interesting video about the audio latency of PC gaming on Windows

[Kaled]

I'm not knowledgeable in the topic, but after I saw the video I thought more knowledgeable people than me might find it interesting and posting it here might spark a fruitful conversation.

phpBB [video]

[managr]

It is indeed an interesting topic.
The important question is who is to blame and who can fix it. The answer is mostly Microsoft. Game devs share some of the blame too, like there's no reason for CS2 to have such high audio latency (I guess it uses an old audio API or has some unnecessarily slow processing in game).

But until MS provides a good universal low latency API inside Windows, game devs can only do so much.

Musicians have been complaining for a long time and MS basically said "we don't care, go use ASIO".
Hopefully if gamers join them in complaining, something can come out of it.

[kyube]

I'm not knowledgeable in the topic, but after I saw the video I thought more knowledgeable people than me might find it interesting and posting it here might spark a fruitful conversation.

phpBB [video]

This user has only scratched the surface on what entails the "audio latency" chain, refer to the thread in my signature.
TLDR: "GPU Audio" (display's 3.5mm or toslink output) are superior in both total latency in WASAPI shared mode (browser test)& total CPU load (lowest DPC/ISR usage) compared to non-USB based sound controllers (ALC897, ALC1200, ALC1220)

[DudeBeFishing]

Some games produce the weapon firing sound the moment the weapon fire command is received. Some games wait until the muzzle flash appears. The worst I've seen is a game had about 80ms or 100ms difference between processing your shot and hearing the audio. You get the kill notification audio before you see and hear your weapon fire.

You're better off learning what the game sounds like, rather than focusing on lowering the latency. It will drastically help with using sound for positioning. For example in PUBG,some audio sources don't change direction when you turn your camera. If you hear a shot in your left ear and quickly turn 180 degrees, that same shot will continue to echo only in your left ear. You have to go by the direction you were looking the moment you heard it. This game also simulates the time it takes sound to travel, so you have to compensate for that too.

Toslink and digital coax seems to have the lowest latency for me, and they require the least complex setup. Just plugin the cable to an external DAC. You don't have to worry about what USB port you use, or what buffer size to set for ASIO.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Some audios necessarily have to be sync'd to network (e.g. kill sounds) but mouselookin theory can rotate the sound in realtime without breaking netcode (etc).

Good audio processing in game engines could have done that. Games should be architectured for lagless mouselook-rotated sound synchronized to display output where possible.

Yes, you do have the other audio subsystem lag (e.g. Bluetooth, Toslink, Coax, etc) but it should be avoided whereupon analog output would be perceptually lagless (in theory).