Hyper Low-Latency Audio with a Real-Time Kernel

The promise of zero or near-zero latency audio is a huge asset to the the Linux operating system. Sometimes, achieving super low-latency audio is tricky, but not if your kernel is hard-realtime capable. Cut your latency to under 3 ms with this tutorial.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ardour
• asio
• audio
• driver
• emu
• hard
• ingo
• jack
• jackd
• journal
• latency
• linux
• low
• molnar
• patch
• preemption
• real
• realtime
• time

[AndrejMitrovich]

Could you let us know where you got the E-MU 0404 USB drivers? Thanks.

[kylep2]

Learn to speak before doing a VO perhaps. You don't seem like much of a recording buff with all the garbage you left in there.

[locobeis]

what about the Demudi of Agnula proyect?, in its website says that was modified for low latency, is that a fact?

[AwakeAudio]

I can achieve stable 5.2ms latency on WindowsXP too...

[ratpoison987]

use gentoo

[arthursucks]

With my stock kernel I get about 5.2ms latency. That's not bad at all.  Plus programs like Ardour compensates for most latency issues.

[romanoskar]

"what does this mean to joe computer? I love linux but this doesn't look important."

You need to use a realtime patch if you use midi synths, or do multi-track recording/mixing. So you're right to a non-recording joe computer this isn't important.

[fixthejam]

what does this mean to joe computer? I love linux but this doesn't look important.

[romanoskar]

It might be worth adding that it's not crucial to get the latency as low as possible, unless you need it for midi synths or realtime audio processing like jesusonic. Otherwise I would recommend to anyone a higher frames and buffer setting. X-runs are extremely annoying when they happen during recording and should be avoided at all costs.

[romanoskar]

Correct. Most distributions have a realtime or at least low-latency kernel in the repos. In ubuntu it's called linux-rt (you don't need ubuntustudio). In Fedora you can get it from the CCRMA repos, and jacklab has one for OpenSuse. - That way you don't have to bother with any of the configurations, you just get it through the package manager and reboot. Unfortunately the rt kernels are still in the unstable category, and rightly so. Unfortunately you can't expect much support from the distros.