FM9 Latency - Around 5ms?

Keybi said:
I did not say that!! For the majority of users <= 10 ms cannot be heard. That's why a lot of people play a modeller with a digital wireless and only get the signal from FOH digital mixer to a monitor with DSP. And they feel very comfortable even though the resulting latency is well over 10 ms. And others still have digital pedals in the FX loop. And that's why I asked a lot of experts about it. And they were usually biologists. You're welcome if you stand out from the crowd. But I was primarily concerned with the 0.x ms. Because latency is unavoidable in digital systems. Nothing more. You misunderstood me or perhaps lost me in translation, as English is not my native language. There is no question that someone is more or less susceptible. But there is a statistical limit somewhere, isn't it ?

And the example of the orchestra also shows that immense latencies do not torpedo the ability of a perfect overall sound. And those violins runs are fast as hell ;-). I also propagate low latencies. Because I also like to play very fast and I like it. I therefore also recommend analogue wireless and monitors without DSP. And I myself always stay around 8 ms. In principle, we have the same point of view and are arguing about tiny milliseconds? I think that's nonsense.
Btw this is put into perspective when I play IN EAR. You have more room to manoeuvre because the cabinet-to-ear distance is eliminated. If, on the other hand, I were to play IN EAR without latency, it would probably be very strange for me, as I probably played around 3000 gigs with tube amps before I switched to modellers.

A few weeks ago I played several gigs with an unknown IN EAR system for a bigger production. That's was weird because the latency introduced with this system was huge. It was pretty annoying. I guess it was overall 20 ms.
Fortunately, the audience didn't care and the fee was very good. But the feeling was less good.

And that's what I mean by my sports comparison. At the end of the day, it's a tool that a lot of players love and get great results, isn't it?
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Thanks for your comments in this thread!
WRT: For the majority of users <= 10 ms cannot be heard.
I can definitely agree with this as I was right on the edge of this and it definitely didn’t feel immediate at 10ms.
But going from 10ms to 5ms DID feel immediate and that relaxed my brain, if that makes sense. :)
 
Keybi said:
And that was ultimately my point. If you're happy with 3.6, you won't hear any difference with 4.2.
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I think that's true for the vast majority of people. It's also worth considering however that while 0.6 ms is not something to worry about in isolation, if you're not careful these small numbers can add up to delays that will be felt by many (e.g. latency from modeler, monitors with DSP, mixers, wireless systems, sound propagation over the air, etc.). Therefore this isn't about whether 0.6 ms is perceivable.
 
I found this old quote at this link-

Even the manufacturers will say, ‘oh, it’s only five milliseconds of latency.’ Yeah, well it’s five milliseconds just in the part that you’re telling us about, but you’re also going to get at least a millisecond in on your USB bus, another millisecond out, maybe another couple milliseconds in the driver, so their five millisecond advertised latency often ends up being twice that. You’ve probably played plug-ins that have a slight delay that is just enough to drive you nuts.

They’ve done studies that showed once you get past a few milliseconds of latency it messes with your timing. And oddly enough once you go over another threshold, I think between three and twelve milliseconds, it screws your timing all up. Once you go beyond twelve, and especially once you go beyond twenty, you actually start to compensate, which is why musicians who play in large groups when they’re separated by pretty large distances can all gel together, because your brain kinda figures it all out.

The reason the study was done was they were talking about online collaboration so that you would be able to basically play in an ensemble, but over the Internet. But of course you got the latency issues of audio-over-IP type stuff so naturally you’re going to incur quite a bit of latency that way. Surprisingly they found out that people can deal with it, they’ll anticipate the latency. But it’s in that in-between range that it screws you up.

I think part of it is because you hear the strings but you can’t hear the audio, so you get that slight delay and it makes the strings feel funny. But anyways, that gets back to the point that you’re at the mercy of your audio interface and PCs are really terrible. They were never designed for real-time processing. When you make your own hardware, you design it to be a real-time system and latencies are ridiculously low because that’s what we design for – extremely low latency. So, will we come out with a PC version? I don’t know. I’ve got other irons in the fire right now.
 
FractalAudio said:
The theoretical latency of the FM3/9 is:
In -> Out - 96 samples = 2ms
In -> Amp -> Out -160 samples = 3.33ms
In -> Amp -> Cab -> Out - 160 samples = 3.33ms (Cab block doesn't add any latency unless IR has leading silence)
in -> Drive -> Amp -> Cab -> Out - 192 samples = 4ms
None of the other blocks add latency.

It appears that perhaps there's a bug in the FM9 and it's adding an extra 64 samples of latency. I will discuss this with the head engineer on that project tomorrow.
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Wondered if there was update to this @FractalAudio?
 
Aleksi said:
Well, realistically the FM3 is all I need and fits nicely on my board. If I still played in a band, I'd just go for the FM9 fpr the convenience.
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There are a couple of other reasons...dual amps probably being the biggest one, being able to design more CPU intensive patches being another...but if you don't need either of those things, the FM3 is a really impressive bit of kit.
 
To this latency of the FM9 I add the latency of my wireless systems which I can no longer do without....which is between 3 and 5 ms depending on the model :cool:
 
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Lolo-G said:
To this latency of the FM9 I add the latency of my wireless systems which I can no longer do without....which is between 3 and 5 ms depending on the model :cool:
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Yeah I have the Sennheiser EW-D but I’ve ditched it in favour of the analog EW100 G4 because of latency. It’s 2ms but it all adds up.
 
The Shure QLXD wireless has a latency of 2.9ms. My Mipro MI-58 wireless IEM system has a latency of <1.8ms. The total doesn’t really bother me but I do make sure to keep the rest of my monitoring signal chain analog.
 
An audio interface has Latency within itself. USB is slower than Thunderbolt. I had a Motu USB and Latency was too much. I switched to Focusrite Thunderbolt and latency is not an issue while recording. I have owned Axe 3, FM3 and FM9 and FC12. I still have the FM9 and FC12. Latency has never been a problem with either unit, recording or live. I use to own a Helix and did not have a latency issue with it.

Boss GT 1000 has a latency of .6, which is better than any unit out there that I am aware of. I have a GT 1000 for a backup of my FM9 in case I have issues. Nothing stands up to Fractal, but to me the GT 1000 is second best to Fractal. Fractal and Boss are the only two companies that has Custom Scales in the pitch block.

I do miss the second pitch block in the FM9 that I had in the AXE 3. That should come in an update hopefully. I like everything on the floor and would also be nice in the next generation to have an Axe 4 on the floor. Just saying!
 
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