Dumping Multi FX

[vintagelove]

If a player can hear 3.5ms of delay and it sounds or feels "late", where does he put the amp? It's about 1ms per foot, right?

So, if the amp is 3.5 feet from his ears, it sounds late?

What happens with an amp, FOH, monitors and an echoey room?

My guess, and it's only a guess, is that musicians acclimate to the delay issues on a bandstand and accommodate to them sort of unconsciously.

The 1ms=1 foot thing falls flat for a few reasons.

First, the lack of dynamic impact/feel that occurs during ad/da and processing. This amplifies (no pun intended) the "late" or disconnected feeling.

Second, I've spent maybe 30,000 hours training my brain that when I play a note here, it comes out here. When you add latency to the picture, I play a note here and it comes out...here.

Now, is it possible to adjust to it? Sure... but why compromise? There's nothing I need that I can't get by staying all analog. If that's not your situation, then act accordingly. I would suggest a ToneX one pedal. You won't find anything digital that really sounds substantially better. It's cheap and LOADED with capabilities, and it has one of the lowest tested latency among it's peers.

Lastly, don't forget that several ms delay, plus loss of dynamics, is added to your actual distance from the amp. It can add up if you're stacking digital boxes.

[Mick-7]

Some people are very sensitive to latency, others barely notice it.

Still, better latency than never.

[pauln]

Multiple sound source location latency effecting musicians on stage and the audience is cured by co-locating the sound sources as close to the drum kit as physically possible.
If all the sound sources are from the same place, then each musician can independently adjust to hear their instrument's place with respect to the rest, despite being at different distances from the common source of sound.
It takes a little thinking to realize how this works, but when the different instruments' sounds are coherent at the common sound source, each musician at each different distance hears the sound as coherent (even if they don't hear it at the same time), so their individual adjustments are made to what each of them hear, and the common source remains coherent for all on stage, and for all in various distances and directions from the stage in the audience.

[garybaldy]

When I used my Harmony Meteor (with added bridge T Top) through my Colorsound Supatonebender and into my Vox AC30 I don't recall being concerned about latency, but my memory now isn't what it was.

[John A.]

The 1ms=1 foot thing falls flat for a few reasons.

First, the lack of dynamic impact/feel that occurs during ad/da and processing. This amplifies (no pun intended) the "late" or disconnected feeling.

Second, I've spent maybe 30,000 hours training my brain that when I play a note here, it comes out here. When you add latency to the picture, I play a note here and it comes out...here.

Now, is it possible to adjust to it? Sure... but why compromise? There's nothing I need that I can't get by staying all analog. If that's not your situation, then act accordingly. I would suggest a ToneX one pedal. You won't find anything digital that really sounds substantially better. It's cheap and LOADED with capabilities, and it has one of the lowest tested latency among it's peers.

Lastly, don't forget that several ms delay, plus loss of dynamics, is added to your actual distance from the amp. It can add up if you're stacking digital boxes.

I've experienced latency while recording through a DAW, but I don't think I've ever noticed any through a digital effect going into an amp. Granted, the only digital effects I use are delay and reverb, and the latency there is difficult to separate from the effect itself. WRT to latency being more noticeable in a DAW than the same delay caused by physical distance from an amp, I think that comes from the fact that with a DAW you're playing through headphones or nearfield monitors and hearing only the latent direct sound without reflections, which creates confusion in your perceptual system, in contrast to physical space where you're always hearing the direct sound and reflections and syncing them to visual cues.

[rpjazzguitar]

I don't see how the 1ms per foot thing falls "flat".

If you can hear 3.5 ms, then you can hear the difference between your amp being say, 3 feet from your head (which seems about as close as you can get it with an ordinary amp on the floor or a stand), vs. 6.5 feet.

Similarly, you can hear the difference between being next to the snare, or kick, and 3.5 feet further away.

[Bob_Ross]

the lack of dynamic impact/feel that occurs during ad/da and processing.

Care to explain/elaborate?