- What latency really is (and why it’s not just a tech buzzword)
- How it sneaks into your recording chain
- The difference between “good” latency and “bad” latency
- Fixes you can do right now without buying a new rig
- When hardware or interface upgrades actually make sense
Proudly supported by our mates at Tri-Booth and Austrian Audio.
Tri-Booth gives you a world-class recording space that fits in your spare room (or your suitcase), while Austrian Audio mics deliver the clarity and detail that make every take shine. We use them, we trust them, and we think you’ll love them too.
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Get ready.
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Be history. Get started.
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Welcome.
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Hi. Hi. Hi.
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Hello, everyone, to the pro audio suite.
00:00:06
These guys are professional and motivated.
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Please take the video. Stars.
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George was a founder of Source Element.
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Robert Marshall, international audio
engineer Darren Robin
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Roberts and global voice Andrew repeaters.
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Thanks to tribal Austrian audio lighting,
passionate elements George the tech
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wisdom and Rob APIs international demos
to find out more about us.
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Jake the Proteas sweetcorn line up.
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Ready? Here we go.
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And welcome to another pro audio suite
thanks to Triber.
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Don't forget the code.
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Try Pip 200 to get $200 off your try.
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Booth and Austrian audio
making your passion heard.
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And like should you say there is something
heading this way towards me?
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That's me from Austrian audio.
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Can't say anything yet, but, we'll be
giving that a whirl in weeks to come.
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And I'm a little bit excited.
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I want to know. Can't tell you.
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How I'm going to wonder that I'm going
to be completely distracted for this.
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What?
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It was just going to keep coming up
with random ideas through the episode.
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Yeah, exactly. Going is it is it?
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Yeah. Does it sound like.
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Can you get it at CVS?
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Yes, you can.
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But it's under a plexus plexi.
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Kits.
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You have to get them to out
open it up for you.
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Is it chocolate colored.
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And there are no buts about it.
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But anyway.
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You had.
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To be on the beginning of the show.
Seriously.
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Maybe we should do that for a,
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We should put that out as the episode.
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It's a Patreon, you know?
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You want to hear the weird shit?
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I said I'd like to. Get that. Joke.
Yeah. Patreon.
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I mean, the nice bit there is.
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You know, we're now talking about
hearing things late, so there you go.
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That probably sits.
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Oh, it does indeed,
because the latency is,
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Well, I mean, everyone kind of knows
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what latency is,
but really do we know what latency is?
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Well, I.
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Think a lot of people are confused about.
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What is. See, delay.
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Let's let's start let's start with what?
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It's not it's not echoing back.
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Yeah.
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Well, it kind of does.
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I mean, I guess because, you know,
if you like, you can sort of hear
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ringing in other people's
headphones and stuff. Right?
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Echoing back is caused by latency,
but latency is not echoing.
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Best latency is what in its most basic
form, latency is the time it takes your
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audio signal to go through your system
to be processed digitally.
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Sometimes
it might be sent to another machine
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and come back,
and then it's got to go back into
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whatever it is you're using
and then go back out.
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So it's the time it takes
is time for that process to happen.
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Yeah. Latency is the time for a process
to take place.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And sometimes for me to understand
what you just said.
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Yeah.
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So like say, look, I mean, biggest place
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I know the city's on source
connect sessions when I'm working with
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maybe doing a voice over demo
with or recording someone in the States.
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Right.
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Because it's got to get to me
from the States and source connects
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for to do it sync.
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And you can talk more
about what happens there Robert.
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And then it's got to go from me.
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I've got to sort of re spot,
I've got to respond.
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And then it's got to go back
through that same process back to right.
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Yeah. That's gone.
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So that's a round trip. So that's. A real.
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Classic latency.
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The classic latency
joke is the guy who's like at the like,
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you know, the war correspondent
out in the field in the control room.
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Just like what's it like out there.
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Oh yes Kenny.
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Yeah. Yeah. It is really awful out here.
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It's there on a satellite.
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Q then it's going to be 3 or 4 second to.
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Right? Yeah.
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So so what what sort of things
are happening inside a plugin.
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Let's talk about for example,
Inside Source Connect.
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Without giving away any trade secrets,
why does like for me it's
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you know, I would sort of think, well,
it's only got to sort of shoot
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through this,
you know, this computer thing.
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Why does it take so long
to get through there?
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So there's latency all over the place.
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Even if you've ever connected
your audio interface and you hear yourself
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like some computer software lets
you monitor yourself through the software,
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and when you do, you might hear a little
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like shadowing or a very quick, very,
very short echo of yourself.
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A musician would call it a flam.
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Or ProTools is a classic example of this,
because unless you use low
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latency monitoring in the native version,
you have a.
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Stream. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
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So then you're going to hear yourself
through all the buffering that occurs
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where your audio interface collects
the data.
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That's one process in the audio
interface computer.
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It hands it off to ProTools,
ProTools records it.
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Maybe ProTools even has to pass it
through a few plugins
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that you have on that channel.
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That's also more time to,
you know, to process those plugins.
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And then out
it goes back to your headphones.
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So every DAW has a usually
some sort of buffer.
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And it's the classic thing
where if you lower the buffer
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you're going to have less latency.
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It'll sound
like you're having less of a flam,
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but then you're going to make it
less stable because the computer
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has less time to apply to do
all these processes that it needs to.
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And if it can't get them all done in time,
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depending on how the software handles it,
it might just stop what it's doing
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and throw an error message up and say,
oh, I had an error,
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or it might not throw
the error message up,
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but it might make all the audio
sound like garbage.
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It just depends on how the software
decides to handle that state.
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So there's time it takes just locally
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to get the audio into your computer
and then into the software,
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be it Pro Tools or Source Connect or Zoom
or whatever it is.
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It has to digitize the audio
so it has a converted from a voltage to
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to a digital signal,
and then has to take that digital signal,
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get it into the computer software,
into the computer software.
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The computer software has to do something
with it.
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EQ compression, who knows.
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In the case of Source Connect,
what it's doing is
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it's taking that audio data,
which is a lot of audio data,
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and it's putting a
with a data compression on it.
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That's not like audio compression
in terms of dynamic range.
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It's compressing the audio to remove
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what it knows
you can't hear as a human, so that it can
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then send less data without losing
audio quality across the internet.
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So that time it takes to compress
the audio, data wise takes,
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only a few milliseconds.
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You know, 20 milliseconds
actually, or something.
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I think it might be less.
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I think it's 20 milliseconds
to compress it and decompress it.
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The real time
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that, no pun intended that occurs is in
hauling it over the internet.
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So there's a few other steps
that connect has to take before
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it gets it on the internet.
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It then has to take chunks
of those of that audio
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and has to chop it up
into what's called the packet.
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Think of that as like
has to put the audio in a box
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so that that box can be
sent over the internet.
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Because the internet doesn't work
in continuous streams of data,
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it works in packets or chunks of data.
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So you have to take your audio.
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That's rather continuous,
chop it up into chunks or packets,
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and then send those packets across
the internet, receive those packets.
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And so when you receive the packets,
you have to have another buffer
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because you need to make sure
that you get all those packets in order.
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When you start sending them out,
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you don't know how they're going
to go across the internet.
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And sometimes some of them
might take a slightly different route
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depending on how the internet,
the internet's, self deterministic,
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how it decides to deliver
data from point A to point B,
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so the buffer on the receiving side
is what the
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what gives the system time to make sure
that it has all the packets in order
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so that it can play them out
without a hiccup or a drop out,
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and then it receives all those packets,
it gets them in order,
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plays them out, decompresses them,
and then reverses everything.
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So it decompresses that makes them
the big string of audio hands that,
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to your audio software
that's playing it out.
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Again, in this case, it's
sort of connect off to the audio card,
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which has a little small buffer in it,
and then out to your headphones.
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So and so all of that, depending on
where you are, it can take a varied amount
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of time, anywhere from 300 milliseconds
to possibly around a half second or.
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So with, with the internet,
because we always
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assume is like point A to point B,
and that's it.
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There's nothing in between.
But it doesn't work that way, does it?
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Because sometimes it'll veer off it off
some other direction.
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Right.
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So there's all the way the internet works
is there's these many different series.
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Yeah. I don't know.
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It's there's many, many, many different
internet service providers out there.
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And they all do
what's called peer together.
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So what makes the internet work
is that all
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providers on the internet
have to peer with each other.
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And this is where you get your issues
with net neutrality and whatnot,
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because they should all deal
with each other's
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data with the same priority,
but they don't necessarily do that.
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They really give all of each other
the lowest priority technically.
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So for example, AT&T, if it has data
from its own network, it's going to pass
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that data to the next hop before it passes
data from, say, T-Mobile or Verizon.
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So the internet's built off
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of these many, many different providers
in the in the United States,
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you have what's called the tier one or,
you know, tier one providers.
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And usually at some point,
if you're connecting from one carrier
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to another, at some point
you end up going down
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all the way down to a tier
one provider and back up,
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so many local carriers
might be many tiers up from a tier one.
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But in theory, if you and your connection
partner were on AT&T, if AT&T was doing
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everything really perfectly,
the data would never leave AT&T network.
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That's not to say it doesn't hop across
many different nodes on AT&T network.
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So AT&T also would peer with itself.
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You know, you're in New York.
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The person you're connecting
with is in, say LA.
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Your signal might go
00:10:04
probably down through Texas,
through some of various servers
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and, you know, like Houston
and maybe over in Colorado or New Mexico.
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And eventually it's just sort of
hopscotching across the country
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from one peering point to the other
until it gets to the end endpoint.
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So with with source connect the just
source elements where your service based.
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So we have relay servers.
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So normally source connect
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first going to try to create
what's called a peer to peer connection
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which AT&T or the provider
would figure out that route for you.
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But if your firewalls
can't trust each other,
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then you have to have the data coming
from a trusted point.
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And that would be our servers.
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So we have servers throughout the globe.
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I forget exactly where at this point,
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because we've expanded, but we at least at
one point had two in Europe,
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I think three
00:10:56
in the United States and one in Asia
at least.
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Yeah.
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Those were that was in the pandemic.
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We had like 5 or 6 points.
I think we have more now.
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But if we like I'm just thinking
like, for instance, if I'm sitting here,
00:11:08
where I'm in Victoria in Australia
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and I'm connecting with Rob in Sydney,
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with which service do I pass through
to get to Sydney from here?
00:11:18
Would I go overseas? You might.
00:11:20
You might go all the way to Singapore
I think is where I think are
00:11:24
apex servers are
I think they're in the Singapore area.
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So if you were connecting peer
00:11:29
to peer, your connection might never leave
Australia.
00:11:32
The servers serve two purposes.
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One is a meet and greet.
00:11:36
So you both log in to the server
and you have no idea where each other are.
00:11:40
And Robbo sends a message to Andrew
that says, hey, I want to connect.
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That message goes to the server and the
server says, oh, I know where Andrew is.
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I'll send that message to Andrew.
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Robert wants to connect.
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Andrew accepts.
00:11:52
Then it's going to basically give up all
the information about Robert's location,
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and it will try to make that
00:11:59
connection peer to peer,
which might take, as I call it, the birds.
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As the bird flies through the internet,
the shortest path.
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That's what the internet should do
naturally,
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should make a peer to peer connection.
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If it can't,
00:12:11
then you might see Source Connect,
say switching over to Source Stream.
00:12:15
At that point, you guys would both
be going through Singapore,
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which technically adds latency
00:12:20
because now you both
have to go all the way
00:12:21
to Singapore
and back to talk to each other. Right?
00:12:24
But the only reason why that would be
happening is to satisfy a firewall
00:12:28
or security issue.
00:12:29
Not because it's actually technically
better to add this mileage
00:12:34
to the connection.
00:12:36
So you're not always
going through our servers.
00:12:39
We try to always find the shortest path.
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So then okay,
so now we know what causes it.
00:12:44
How can we deal with it.
00:12:45
So Source Connect three
you would have your ports forwarded.
00:12:49
And that would very much guarantee
that you'd get a peer to peer connection.
00:12:53
If both sides have their ports forwarded
00:12:54
you're going to get a peer
to peer connection
00:12:56
as long as you don't have that user stream
checkbox selected.
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Which would force it to use the streaming
server again.
00:13:03
That's the best way.
00:13:04
But port forwarding has just
become untenable for a number of reasons.
00:13:09
One of the biggest reasons
is especially with the NBN,
00:13:13
I've seen this
and really with more and more countries,
00:13:17
in the United States,
if you have a cellular connection,
00:13:20
you're not going
00:13:21
to get an internet connection that puts
you directly on the public internet
00:13:25
and most of the internet connections
that the NBN provides,
00:13:28
as far as I've noticed, do not put you
directly on the public internet,
00:13:31
so you can't do port forwarding
unless you have a direct connection
00:13:35
to the public internet.
00:13:37
If you don't have a direct connection
to the public internet, basically
00:13:39
what you have is an internet service
provider that corrals all their users
00:13:44
into one massive little private network,
and then lets them all
00:13:48
get to the public internet through one
point of presence, essentially.
00:13:53
And they save money,
they save IP addresses this way and costs.
00:13:57
So you can think of it, the difference
of living in a city directly on the grid,
00:14:02
or living in the little community
00:14:04
where all the houses
have all their private roads.
00:14:06
But to get out to the road anywhere else
besides the group of houses,
00:14:10
you have to go through that one road
that puts you on the public road
00:14:14
compared to the HOA.
00:14:17
So most
00:14:17
internet service providers are sticking
everyone B inside their HOA now.
00:14:21
Therefore, you can't do port forwarding
and port forwarding is a pain in the butt.
00:14:25
Usually.
00:14:26
Source CNet can try to figure its way
out of those networks and still establish
00:14:32
a port, a peer to peer connection,
even without a port forward.
00:14:36
But it's not guaranteed,
because a lot has to do with.
00:14:39
Yeah, it gets really technical,
but essentially a really strong firewall.
00:14:44
A router would realize that it's
00:14:47
having a conversation with our server
and that's using a port.
00:14:51
And then Robbo comes in and says, hey,
let me send data in to Andrew
00:14:54
on that same port.
00:14:56
And a good firewall would say, Yeah.
00:14:58
See you. Later.
00:14:59
I'm not fallen for that.
00:15:00
Like,
like you're not the person I'm talking to.
00:15:03
Whereas a weaker
firewall would let us kind of like,
00:15:06
stick our foot in the door and then
let Rob go in through that same port.
00:15:10
There's advantages
to those weak firewalls,
00:15:12
but there's also,
of course, obviously disadvantages.
00:15:16
So ultimately
00:15:17
it's these days,
you know, compared to the early 2000s,
00:15:21
it's just not possible
to port forward the world anymore.
00:15:25
And so the whole service has gotten
00:15:28
more expensive
00:15:29
to provide for these reasons,
because you have to rely on a whole global
00:15:32
network of servers, even more
so to be able to make all this work.
00:15:38
But yeah,
that's how it establishes its connection.
00:15:41
And you don't know, like,
you could have a situation where
00:15:45
two people who live in the same city
because of the firewall
00:15:48
as they can't connect with each other,
00:15:50
and even though they're only one house
away from each other,
00:15:53
might have to bounce
through a relay server,
00:15:56
it's hundreds of miles away
from the two of them.
00:15:59
But not ideal, but sort of.
00:16:01
That's how it goes.
00:16:03
So it's connect
four does a pretty good job, right?
00:16:05
Well, it doesn't need port
forwarding anymore and it has a much more.
00:16:09
It has a larger system of global
servers to get through. And
00:16:14
yeah.
00:16:14
So in the sense it's better
because it doesn't rely on port
00:16:17
forwarding so much and it's a little bit
more intelligent about Source connect
00:16:20
three sometimes would end up
in a situation where it,
00:16:25
for example, there's a system called UPnP
or it's called Universal
00:16:29
Plug and Play, and that's
where the software asks for a port.
00:16:33
And then the router opens up that port
for the software, which is great.
00:16:38
But then what people do
is they get service from say,
00:16:42
Comcast Internet, and then they go
over to BestBuy and they buy a Euro router
00:16:47
and they hook up this Wi-Fi thing
to their whole house.
00:16:51
So what they've done is
they've put a router inside of a router,
00:16:53
they've basically created
the turducken of networks.
00:16:56
And you have firewalls inside of firewalls
literally.
00:17:00
Or you know, so UPnP says, hey,
you have a port, but it doesn't know
00:17:04
about the next router layer
outside of that, which blocks the port.
00:17:08
And source connect
doesn't know about that.
00:17:10
So then Source Connect doesn't know
at least first connect three wasn't
00:17:13
as quick
or good about figuring out like, oh,
00:17:16
I don't really have UPnP,
I don't really have a port.
00:17:20
I thought,
I have a port, and that's where,
00:17:23
so sometimes you would have
00:17:25
those connections that didn't work
as fluidly, and you'd have to tell it
00:17:28
to switch over to source stream source
connect four is a little bit.
00:17:32
It's a lot better about figuring out
when when it needs to switch over.
00:17:37
What about Wi-Fi boosters like,
you know, I've got in this house
00:17:40
because the modem is actually
in the studio here, which is not.
00:17:44
Typically add a layer.
00:17:45
So some of them add a layer
or some of them don't.
00:17:48
It depends on how they're set up.
00:17:51
George, you'd actually know
more about those I think, than I do,
00:17:54
but sometimes they they literally
present themselves as your first router
00:17:58
is 1921681.1 and the internet boosters
00:18:01
1921682.1.
00:18:04
That change in that second
00:18:05
number is a whole nother network layer
that's called the subnet.
00:18:10
And now you've.
00:18:11
Yeah. Shit complicated.
There's new router.
00:18:14
Well there's modern routers
now that have mesh
00:18:18
Wi-Fi router, mesh Wi-Fi extenders.
00:18:22
And the nice thing about mesh stuff
is they do extend the same IP
00:18:25
address across your home.
00:18:28
But they have to
be they all have to work together, right?
00:18:30
You can't just.
00:18:31
And the mesh has to be your thing,
but you have to hook up
00:18:34
your internet connection
directly to the head unit of the mesh.
00:18:38
If not the whole.
00:18:39
If not, the whole mesh becomes a layer.
00:18:42
Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
00:18:43
It's yeah, it's it gets messy quick.
00:18:46
Even in my little 800 square foot
apartment I have, I have a router,
00:18:50
a power over
Ethernet extender to go to the living room
00:18:54
which is ten feet away,
but our house is made out of chicken wire.
00:18:56
Yeah.
00:18:58
The entire thing is a Faraday cage, right?
00:19:00
And that goes out to the living room,
and then it goes
00:19:03
from there to the kitchen to another Poe.
00:19:08
Oh, no.
00:19:08
It goes through, through the walls.
00:19:10
And then it goes from there to the kitchen
to another to the other Poe.
00:19:14
Then it goes to another network
extender out there,
00:19:16
which is on a different subnet, completely
to get to my webcam out in the garage.
00:19:22
Right.
00:19:23
And that's the kind of thing
you have to do sometimes.
00:19:25
But if your network is, for example,
there's one brand of router called Eero,
00:19:31
not necessarily my favorite,
but they are friendly to use.
00:19:34
The, let me let me make one complaint
about know
00:19:37
the only place you can manage
that thing is on your stupid cell world.
00:19:41
Oh, wow.
00:19:42
Okay. Yeah. So annoying.
00:19:44
That's what I don't like.
00:19:45
And I think they do it
for security reasons.
00:19:47
It's easier to secure it.
00:19:48
Probably over a mobile.
00:19:50
It makes it really hard
to tech support for people.
00:19:53
It is really a nuisance. Yeah.
00:19:55
For you guys to help somebody on an Eero
and have to talk them through
00:19:59
how to do it. On their own
while talking to them on their phone.
00:20:01
It's not nearly. Yes.
00:20:02
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:03
You set up a. Screen share
and then you're like, wait.
00:20:05
You're like, oh, screen trainer computer,
let me jump in your router.
00:20:08
Zero.
00:20:08
You're like,
oh God, okay, pick up your cell phone.
00:20:11
What do you see? Oh I. Don't know.
00:20:13
It says router.
00:20:13
It doesn't say router.
No it says it's supposed to say router.
00:20:16
I don't see it because half the time
they don't even look.
00:20:19
Oh fine. Oh now I see it.
Three minutes later. Yeah.
00:20:22
Like yeah.
00:20:23
Yeah I haven't got a year. I said, what
are you talking about? That wasn't me.
00:20:27
Okay. Yes.
00:20:29
I mean you want to look for like Synology
or Ubiquity.
00:20:32
Ubiquity is great ones. Yeah I like.
00:20:34
Like not that expensive and really,
really reliable and easy to configure.
00:20:38
But yes, you got to be really careful
with that stuff.
00:20:41
It can slow down your whole network.
00:20:43
Especially the ones that go Wi-Fi
to Wi-Fi.
00:20:45
So one of the things about the extenders
I have a set of ubiquiti unify routers
00:20:50
and they're Wi-Fi hotspots,
but they are meant
00:20:54
to be connected
to each other through Ethernet.
00:20:58
Yeah.
00:20:58
And therefore, because if not,
what you have is like, anything
00:21:02
that's wireless has more latency
than anything that is wired.
00:21:06
And all these things
that are wirelessly extending things,
00:21:09
you have both the transmit,
the the receive and the transmit
00:21:13
latency that you're adding to it
because you're basically asking it to be,
00:21:18
access point and, receive
00:21:20
point wirelessly at the same time.
00:21:23
It's, you know, it's being both ends of it
simultaneously.
00:21:26
I bought years ago, the, Apple AirPods.
00:21:30
So they, you know, they plug into the plug
in the wall and then fire off Wi-Fi.
00:21:35
So basically, my setup is like an Ethernet
cable connected to the modem in here.
00:21:39
Underground, then into the house.
00:21:42
And then there's a whole bunch of Ethernet
plugs all through the house.
00:21:46
Nice, nice. Yeah.
00:21:48
That's what happens
when you build your own house.
00:21:50
Yeah, definitely. Exactly.
00:21:53
Yeah.
00:21:54
Yeah.
00:21:55
Because because the power over the
or the Ethernet over the power system
00:21:59
and I've seen mixed, mixed results
with those things.
00:22:02
Yeah.
00:22:03
Like they,
they don't they slow things down.
00:22:06
I think that we talk about the latency
on the, on the computer
00:22:09
and where the delay between
the add converter to the computer to it.
00:22:13
And so I was getting that. Yeah.
00:22:15
All of that.
I tried going over that at the beginning.
00:22:18
ProTools. Yeah. ProTools
native in how it's.
00:22:20
Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:21
Like that really matters
for people playing in sync.
00:22:24
Right. Like mainly music.
00:22:26
Like if you're trying to play virtual
instruments, synthesizers,
00:22:30
all sorts of layers and have everything
line up so you don't have to manually.
00:22:34
Or if you want to. Right. Yeah. To vision.
Well yeah.
00:22:36
I mean like like
00:22:37
like one thing to be really
00:22:38
clear on is like what is latency
that matters and doesn't matter.
00:22:41
So if you're looking at lip lip sync
you can have a little bit of tolerance
00:22:45
there.
00:22:46
20 milliseconds isn't going to make
something look out of sync,
00:22:49
but 20 milliseconds at the right musical
tempo
00:22:52
is the difference
between a good player and a bad player.
00:22:57
Right.
00:22:57
I always used to laugh at these systems
00:22:59
that claim to let you play music
over the internet and when you would.
00:23:03
Oh, go, go companies. Yeah, listen.
00:23:05
Excuse me, but bullshit.
00:23:07
So you read the manual and at some point
they would say things like, you know, once
00:23:11
you get it all hooked up and you've driven
all your drivers
00:23:13
down to the lowest latency,
so everything's as unstable as possible,
00:23:18
you will get used to playing with latency
00:23:20
and it works better with slower
tempo music.
00:23:24
Like it works.
00:23:24
Better
if the other band members are in your.
00:23:26
Yeah, yeah, it works. Better
if no one has a sense of.
00:23:29
Time. What about Ringo Starr?
00:23:31
Right?
00:23:31
Ringo Starr's in-built latency gave him
a name is one of the world's
00:23:35
greatest drummers because he's naturally,
let's call it feel.
00:23:37
Yeah. And his grandmother
made him learn to get right.
00:23:40
But it took him
longer to get to the snare drum
00:23:43
because of the way
he learned to play the drums,
00:23:45
and that gave him that natural
swing that everyone goes, oh,
00:23:47
George of stuff
like Ringo is a fucking genius.
00:23:50
Yeah, yeah, no,
but it was like it was just. A but.
00:23:53
Inbuilt latency that he wasn't.
00:23:55
But here's another point of latency.
00:23:57
Why do orchestras have conductors?
00:24:01
Because
00:24:02
again, at the right tempo,
the amount of time it takes
00:24:04
for the double basses
on one side of the orchestra to hear
00:24:09
and see what the percussionist is doing on
the other side of the orchestra
00:24:12
is a musical time value.
00:24:15
It might be a 64th note,
00:24:17
but it's their speed of light conductor
waving their hands.
00:24:21
Now you can get everyone to play in sync,
but you know it's true.
00:24:24
Two people
sitting on either end of a football field
00:24:27
at the speed of sound
cannot play in sync with each other.
00:24:30
Yeah. It's impossible.
Yeah, yeah, I remember that. We did that.
00:24:33
We did that, experiment at school.
We we took a start.
00:24:36
Has gone up to one of the ovals at school.
00:24:38
And, you know, we all stood down one end
00:24:39
and the teacher was down
the other end with the started down.
00:24:42
And you saw that you saw the smoke
before you heard the sound.
00:24:44
Yeah. Well,
that's sort of. Exactly where I saw it.
00:24:48
I don't like to say Pink Floyd.
00:24:49
I saw Dave Gilmore play in Soldier
Field here in Chicago,
00:24:53
and he played money,
and he had the whole thing out in quad.
00:24:56
So doing church, bom bom bom bom,
00:25:00
and each
beat would go to a different speaker.
00:25:02
Except I was about 20ft from one speaker
00:25:06
and about a 1500 feet
from another speaker.
00:25:10
So that whole thing sounded like boom,
chicka bom bom bom bom boom chicka boom.
00:25:15
Yeah.
00:25:15
What if you want a good lesson in latency,
sit down with one of the guys that mics
00:25:19
those stadium events because like, you're
dealing with that day in and day out.
00:25:24
Yeah, absolutely.
00:25:25
I actually had a totally different venue.
00:25:27
I watched a geeky video from this
great podcast called 20Hz.
00:25:33
They really it's a great show, by the way.
00:25:34
Free audio people.
00:25:35
Check out 20Hz.
00:25:37
And the gentleman,
the gentleman, the host.
00:25:39
The show did.
It's doing a video series now.
00:25:42
And he walked the Disney property.
00:25:45
Disneyland.
00:25:46
And the guy he was that took him on
the tour is an expert
00:25:50
on everything Disney technology, you know,
00:25:54
and he shows the guy where
all the hidden speakers are on the mall.
00:25:57
You know, as you walk down Main Street
where the speakers are located,
00:26:01
where the control, you know, control
towers are, where the audio mixer sitting.
00:26:06
But what was really cool,
00:26:07
what's relevant to the conversation,
is talking about how they are masters
00:26:10
at controlling the delays of sound
between systems, so that anywhere you are,
00:26:16
you never hear an overlapping echo
from another zone.
00:26:20
Well, yes.
00:26:21
Even to the point when they have parades,
their old Electric Light parade,
00:26:25
which is so famous and fun, you know,
they had the speakers on the parade car.
00:26:29
But nowadays
00:26:30
the technology, the system sounds,
the sound is so much more sophisticated.
00:26:34
So these speakers
all the way down the entire parade route,
00:26:37
and there's beacons and every single float
00:26:40
telling the system where the float is,
00:26:43
so it knows where the music for that float
should be playing.
00:26:47
And and what? See,
you know why it should be said to.
00:26:49
And so as the thing travels down,
that's so cool.
00:26:52
No matter where you are,
you're hearing the music for that float.
00:26:55
But it's coming from,
you know, fixed speaker locations
00:26:59
and a lot of the speakers are hidden,
but now they have speaker towers up
00:27:03
because you can only hide so many speakers
nowadays.
00:27:06
They and they always
put them by the trees.
00:27:09
So there'll be a nice tree
and then next to it, a big speaker tower.
00:27:12
But it's kind of disguised,
you don't really know.
00:27:15
Looks like a. Business or something.
00:27:17
Yeah.
00:27:17
Say what you will about Disney,
but they're geniuses at heart.
00:27:20
Are you sure? I mean, just incredible.
00:27:23
You know, the audio on and tronic,
all that stuff is just next level.
00:27:27
But just talking about latency.
00:27:29
It's the most when you really twist
your head around what's going on.
00:27:33
And what's so remarkable
is they do it so well.
00:27:37
And we all know this about sound, right?
00:27:38
You only know it's bad.
00:27:41
You only
notice audio when it's fucking bad, right?
00:27:44
It's the most like unsung hero of tech.
00:27:47
Because when it's good I mean,
unless you're somewhat of a enthusiast,
00:27:52
I'm like, oh, this sounds great, but
most of the time you don't say anything.
00:27:56
But when it's
when it's. Bad, you're hiding. It.
00:27:58
You hate it.
00:27:59
So I think George Lucas line
sound is 50% of the picture.
00:28:03
Yeah.
00:28:03
Yeah yeah yeah.
00:28:04
Or video
without sound is just surveillance. Oh.
00:28:08
Yeah.
00:28:08
Yeah, I like that.
00:28:10
Yeah,
I like that. Talk about video and latency.
00:28:13
Years and years and years ago,
00:28:14
I used to do a TV show
which was live on a Friday night,
00:28:17
the music show,
and it was before, Hi-Fi television.
00:28:22
So the big thing was
you had an FM radio station, and you did
00:28:26
a thing called a simulcast
00:28:28
for anyone under 4515, somebody would have
no idea what I'm doing.
00:28:33
But anyway, so you had the audio
coming out of your Hi-Fi speakers
00:28:37
and the pictures on your television,
so I should have the show.
00:28:41
But the problem was
because we had to rely on
00:28:44
the control room
back at the TV network to play the videos.
00:28:48
So I had on my chair under the right,
a button.
00:28:52
But I had to work on, I think it was a
00:28:55
2 or 3 second roll from memory.
00:28:58
So when I'm doing my spiel,
I had to work out,
00:29:01
you know, backwards 2
or 3 seconds before I finished
00:29:05
so I could press the button, which alerted
the guys in the control room to rotate
00:29:08
at a time. The rotate,
because in a three second roll.
00:29:11
No way. They roll in and then.
00:29:14
It's like the engine room in the ship,
you know, you push the throttle forward
00:29:17
and then the downstairs,
the light comes on full steam, you.
00:29:20
Know, and then you'd fire up this I used.
00:29:22
To have to deal with,
00:29:23
with the first version of Source Live,
like back in 2014,
00:29:27
the latency to get a broadcast
that wasn't peer to peer,
00:29:32
it would take like three seconds.
00:29:34
So I'd talk to my clients and say,
okay, well,
00:29:36
here's that thing that you asked for.
00:29:38
It's, you know, like, I lower the audio,
I lower the music, I raise that
00:29:42
I got rid of that pop.
00:29:43
I hit play there, that play button is
I just slam the button
00:29:47
and say a few more things
and then it would play.
00:29:49
So hopefully when I said, here
it is, it would start.
00:29:52
But I really had hit play like a second
and a half or two seconds earlier,
00:29:56
trying to make it.
00:29:57
Seem like it's like my Subaru
trying to pass a car on the freeway with.
00:29:59
This.
00:30:02
I'm like, I think I'm going to pass
this guy in a minute.
00:30:04
I'll slam the throttle.
00:30:06
For the 1980s turbo car.
00:30:09
Well, you hit the throttle.
00:30:11
That's right.
00:30:12
At turbo.
00:30:12
Lag. Yeah, they should call it
turbo latency.
00:30:14
Yeah.
00:30:15
It wasn't.
00:30:16
It was a turbo lag, wasn't it?
That's what they call it.
00:30:19
Yeah. Turbo.
00:30:19
Yeah, yeah.
00:30:20
I tell you what, this does discussion
does shine a really good light on it.
00:30:23
1996 or 97
00:30:27
would have been I was still at triple M
and we did a triple cast right?
00:30:31
Yeah, I remember the triple cast.
00:30:33
There was an Australian band called
Boom Crash Opera who was still around.
00:30:36
Now they're actually touring at them.
00:30:37
I remember them right.
00:30:38
Well, we had, a TV show, a national
TV show called hey, Hey, It's Saturday,
00:30:43
which was on it's Saturday night,
and it was like a national icon.
00:30:47
So we got boom.
00:30:48
So the triple M network
lined up with, hey, hey, it's Saturday,
00:30:51
and we did a triple cast.
00:30:52
We had a band member
in each state, each capital city.
00:30:56
So I think Dale rider was a triple
M in Sydney with me.
00:31:00
And there was the guitarist in Adelaide,
the drummer was somewhere,
00:31:03
blah blah blah blah blah.
00:31:04
And it was when the internet
was first starting up and they played live
00:31:10
on TV, on triple M and on the internet,
so you could tune in and listen to them
00:31:15
playing on the internet,
and they were all in a different state.
00:31:17
So we're talking back then
00:31:20
dial up connections, all that rubbish.
00:31:23
Wait wait wait wait wait.
00:31:24
The musicians were in three
different positions.
00:31:27
Were all those band members 4 or 5 in boom
fresh?
00:31:30
Five? Oh, pleasant had gone by then,
so I would have been four. I think.
00:31:34
I suppose it might be.
00:31:36
I'll tell you what it's on,
but you can watch it.
00:31:38
It's on YouTube if you want to go
and watch it, I'll stick the link.
00:31:42
They had to have been playing to a click
that was synchronized
00:31:44
with the central point.
There's no effing way.
00:31:47
Don't forget they were listening to the TV
feed to hear each other.
00:31:50
They weren't listening to each other
across the internet, but it was correct.
00:31:54
They're all listen is something that has.
00:31:55
It was on all sides, right? Right,
I tell you.
00:31:57
Broadcast,
terrestrial terrestrial broadcast.
00:32:01
But still I mean, you know.
00:32:02
Yeah. Back then yeah it was a big thing.
00:32:05
That's pretty cool. Well, you were there.
00:32:06
You were there. Rob.
00:32:07
Oh. When,
guild off used to come and do drive
00:32:11
in the.
00:32:13
Yeah.
00:32:14
And he,
I got a call from a record company.
00:32:16
Go, girl, I was talking to her,
and I said, what are you up to?
00:32:19
Some at lunch with Lee Amalia from
Hothouse Flowers went, oh, he's Irish.
00:32:24
Why don't you come in
and you can get on there with Geldof?
00:32:28
So he did,
and then they end up doing a song member.
00:32:30
They did do the live song,
00:32:31
which was a Tim Buckley song,
and I wish I could remember what it was,
00:32:34
but Liam Amalia played keyboards and sang.
00:32:38
Charlie Musselwhite was on harmonica.
00:32:41
Can't remember than a guy's name
who's playing guitar.
00:32:45
And I think Geldof
sort of wandered it out,
00:32:46
playing the bow role
or some weird shit, but, But
00:32:50
Liam, Amalia, the headphones didn't work
and we were going live to hear.
00:32:54
So he played the
00:32:55
keyboards, he couldn't hear the keyboard,
and he sang.
00:32:59
Oh, wow.
00:32:59
But he played the keyboard.
00:33:01
Didn't miss a note
without even hearing it. Yes.
00:33:04
That's somebody that was amazing, Mr.
00:33:06
Beethoven. Some of those guys.
00:33:08
Yeah.
00:33:08
I mean, my let
I have one last latency story too,
00:33:11
because it ties into radio again
when I did the Eagles football,
00:33:15
broadcasts, we were simulcasting
because it was television,
00:33:19
but we were on the radio. Right.
00:33:22
And it's not technically a simulcast,
but the fans in Philly
00:33:26
and in the Philadelphia area
wanted to hear our announcer, you know.
00:33:30
Yeah, they want to hear the hometown
announcer. Right.
00:33:32
So it's very popular to turn down
the television and turn up the radio.
00:33:36
Right. Talk about sync problems.
00:33:39
What often happened was
we were ahead of the broadcast.
00:33:43
Yeah. Right, right.
00:33:44
And so you would get calls from the fans
calling in the station saying.
00:33:49
You guys are ahead of the TV, man.
00:33:51
And then we'd have to call in
to engineering.
00:33:53
And they had a delay control,
you know, back at the.
00:33:56
Yeah, at the station
they'd add a second 2 or 3 of delay
00:34:01
so that when you lose to the game
because you see when you hear male go,
00:34:04
it's just, you know, fumble
and the guy's still running
00:34:07
and they're like, it's
going to be a fumble. Oh shit.
00:34:10
Oh you bet. Yeah.
00:34:13
Yeah.
00:34:13
So you would have to deal with that,
you know. And that.
00:34:16
Well if. You watch it.
00:34:16
If you watch film coverage,
you'll see that all the time
00:34:20
because they'll, they'll cross the
like this the garage of whatever team.
00:34:24
And you see a screen in the background
00:34:26
which is showing something
you saw about four seconds ago.
00:34:29
And then it will turn to the guys in the,
you know, in the in the garage
00:34:33
on the pit lane, two. More places
where latency comes up.
00:34:36
Number one, you buy these in house
like Sony's speakers,
00:34:41
and they are having to synchronize
the delay
00:34:43
throughout your house
so that you walk upstairs and downstairs
00:34:47
and you get somewhat
of a continuous experience
00:34:51
without getting an echoey sound
when you're standing between two zones.
00:34:57
That's one.
00:34:57
And that's very hard to do,
especially because you're dealing
00:35:00
with physical space.
00:35:03
At some point
you cannot actually compensate for this.
00:35:05
You can.
00:35:05
Only one thing to be really clear about.
00:35:07
You can only compensate for latency.
00:35:09
From a point of perspective, and you can
only compensate latency by adding latency.
00:35:14
There's no time travel like people have
latency compensation like. You.
00:35:19
Can't speed it up to.
00:35:20
Time travel yet.
00:35:21
Yeah. You can't you can't go back in time.
00:35:24
So that's one place.
00:35:25
The other thing
that's interesting with latency,
00:35:28
you might remember with landline
00:35:32
phone calls, they were quicker.
00:35:35
And now everyone is so used to latency
00:35:38
on the phone network with cell phones
that the funniest thing
00:35:43
that I've realized, actually,
is that recently I've been on a few phone
00:35:46
calls and Source Connect
beat the phone call.
00:35:49
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
00:35:51
Which was really interesting.
00:35:53
Well, everyone
now is this culturally used to much higher
00:35:57
latency conversations
than we used to in the 80s with
00:36:02
wired telephones across the whole world.
00:36:04
Except when you were doing.
The you're going. Through these.
00:36:06
I can still remember though, back in
the 70s and 80s, because I'm fucking old.
00:36:12
You know,
you be doing an international call.
00:36:13
It'd be like, how are you?
00:36:16
Are you there? Yeah. Good.
00:36:17
Oh, no. I'm sorry.
00:36:19
And then everyone's talking over
00:36:20
one another and it's costing
loads of money and.
00:36:22
Yeah, yeah.
00:36:24
God, Jesus.
It's like a phone call. Oh, yeah.
00:36:26
I a half hour interview
at a radio station.
00:36:28
It cost the station,
like 200 bucks or something. Yeah, yeah.
00:36:31
I see end lines go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:36:33
Fucking. Oh yeah yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.
00:36:35
God forbid someone forgot to hang up
the damn ISDN box.
00:36:39
Over the weekend, we we did that
when we were just, testing Source Connect,
00:36:43
and we were doing some latency tests
because aptX for example, is a codec.
00:36:48
We were talking about compression
and decompression, and we used to have
00:36:52
a version of Source Connect that use
the aptX codec or people call it aptX X.
00:36:56
And now aptX is used a lot with Bluetooth
for doing your surround speakers
00:37:00
because it's it most codecs.
00:37:04
A codec is the thing that compresses
the data and makes it less data
00:37:07
to transmit.
00:37:08
Most codecs do this
by figuring out what you can't hear.
00:37:12
Is a human. But aptX didn't use,
00:37:16
perceptual coding.
00:37:17
It used, linear adaptive linear
00:37:20
PCM or something I think had ad, I forget.
00:37:23
But anyways, it was much, much faster.
00:37:25
What would take most codecs around
20 milliseconds to encode decode?
00:37:29
I think aptX could do it
in four milliseconds. Wow.
00:37:33
So we were testing with the aptX ISDN box
and comparing it to Source Connect.
00:37:38
Connect it to California.
00:37:40
We had some pretty good results
00:37:42
and then we just went home
and it was the weekend.
00:37:45
Yeah.
00:37:46
And the aptX system would take
it wouldn't take two ISDN lines.
00:37:49
It would take four because it it couldn't
achieve as much of a compression ratio.
00:37:55
It was much faster.
00:37:56
Who didn't disconnect?
00:37:57
Robert I'm. Innocent.
00:38:01
The box didn't disconnect.
00:38:03
The the line, the,
00:38:06
Oops.
00:38:07
That was an expensive,
that was got to hang.
00:38:09
That was expensive.
00:38:10
That was that was almost $1 for that
one weekend.
00:38:14
Yeah.
00:38:15
Yeah, it happened to Miguel for our IP.
00:38:18
They left it open.
00:38:20
Yeah, yeah, nobody hung up.
00:38:21
The suit didn't hang up. Yeah.
00:38:23
And he he was the one that dialed in. Oh.
00:38:25
Which is not really protocol,
but for whatever reason.
00:38:29
Boom. He dialed in. And got he got nailed.
00:38:31
He got the bill. Yeah. And he. Yeah.
00:38:34
My my, when when.
00:38:35
When I first set up the bridge,
I bought a, used my, ISDN box,
00:38:39
and it came from some radio station.
00:38:41
It was set up as a studio,
the transmitter link.
00:38:43
And it had a program in there that said,
if you disconnect,
00:38:46
like dial back
and get that connection back.
00:38:50
And I didn't know that,
I didn't clear the settings out.
00:38:53
And I put my new ISDN numbers in there,
and I did a bridge that dialed out.
00:38:57
And then like bridges over
and I disconnected or whatever.
00:39:01
And I got home and that was like 300 bucks
and that was just for like eight hours
00:39:06
or something or six hours
that the stupid thing dialed back.
00:39:10
The moral to the story is, if you've got
an ISDN box and you forget to hang up,
00:39:14
you need to go to a CVS store right now
because you're going to need it.
00:39:23
And that's the out
00:39:25
literally.
00:39:26
Well, that's the that's is at the end.
00:39:30
Both.
00:39:36
Well that was fun.
00:39:36
Is it a works.
00:39:38
In the pro audio suite thanks to
00:39:40
tribal and Austrian audio
recorded using Source Connect,
00:39:44
edited by Andrew Peters and mix by Robert
Good.
00:39:48
Your own audio issues,
just ask Rob Aucoin.
00:39:51
Tech support for George the Tech William.
00:39:53
Don't forget to subscribe
00:39:54
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00:39:58
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00:40:02
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