Thread

1. weberer · 1790574660 · focus · HN ↗

   How is the latency? Whenever there's a FPGA driven pedal, like the Hatsune Miku one, everyone always complains about the delay it adds.

   1. atoav · 1790582764 · focus · HN ↗

      IMO this is a total non-issue. I have never had a digital pedal that had any latency issue. The only latency issues I ever had was when I used a shitty 50 bucks audio interface on an inadequate PC ca 2006.

      And I am a very rhythmically educated guitarist/bassist and a DSP programmer, that means I am likely more aware of this than the average person.

      Also: you know what else has latency? Sound. 1 millisecond per 33 cm. That means from striking a string on an acoustic guitar till hearing it you also got latency, first it takes a moment for the string to vibrate, then the sound needs to travel to your ears. In big orchestras that latency is a thing great musicians account for.

      And every halfway decent musician can do this by just hitting the note slightly early to compensate.

      Latency is IMO the biggest issue with vocalists and speakers, because the delayed signal mixes with the original signal you hear in your head, depending on the latency this can either lead to weird comb filtering or irritating doubling. But if your instrument is only heard through the electric chain a lot is acceptable before it starts to get really unusuable. And modern DSPs don't really have latency issues if used correctly.

      1. frmrtntn · 1790874713 · focus · HN ↗

         Have you ever used a Digitech Whammy pedal? I can definitely notice the latency on that. It's low enough to be playable, but the difference when A/Bing is stark.

         1. atoav · 1790881481 · focus · HN ↗

            Yes, but there the latency is not because of the conversion, but inherent part of the algorithm. Pitch tracking is needed for any form of sophisticated pitch shifting and this can only be done if the algorithm reads one or two cycles of the incoming signal. Your pedal could perform the fastest processing in the world, but there is simply no way to know the pitch of a signal before it shows up , thus you get a certain kind of lag. The more sophisticated the pitch tracking and the lower the pitches you want to support the worse this gets. I find it still totally playable with the DigiTech pedals. I find it way more annoying that their bypass circuit is not transparent, which is especially noticeable if you introduce electronic feedback on your pedal board.

            The only way to pitch up signals without delay is if you do something very simple like octave Fuzzes, that essentially just rectify the incoming signal and then remove the DC offset (aside from the fuzz distortion part). That works, but sounds of course relatively unnatural, especially if more than one note is being played at once, since it just decides on every zero crossing with total disregard for the actual pitches present.

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