About the Audio Interfaces category

Audio Interfaces
1

See here for latency measurements

JackTrip’s ability to move audio quickly over the Internet is limited by the speed of your connection, computer and audio interface. This is an open, crowd-sourced database measuring the round-trip latencies of various audio interfaces.

There are many different ways to measure round-trip latency. We have standardized on use of RTL Utility for all measurements because:

  • it is available for free on all platforms JackTrip supports (Windows, Mac, Linux)
  • is very easy to use and provides measurements very quickly, with little room for human error
  • has been compared against other methods of measurements with successful results

To use RTL Utility, you need to establish a loopback connection between an output channel and an input channel on your audio interface.

Note that different buffer sizes have a huge impact on audio interface latency, however they are directly correlated. A latency of x for a buffer size of 128 does not imply a latency of x/2 for a buffer size of 64. It is therefore important to measure various buffer sizes. It’s important to standardize on buffer sizes that may be commonly used for live performance over the Internet (as low as possible) versus having to test every possible one for every interface. We have chosen the following:

  • 16
  • 32
  • 64
  • 128
  • 256

Higher buffer sizes are simply impractical for anything considered “low latency.”

The same is true for sample rates. We have chosen the following:

  • 48 Khz
  • 96 Khz

To submit new measurements or changes, please post a new thread in this forum.

Here are the steps to generate new measurements:

  1. Use a line-level (i.e. 1/4" TRS) analog audio cable to connect an output channel to an input channel on the audio interface. You only need to connect one channel.
  2. Download and open the RTL Utility
  3. Select the audio interface as the output device, and the output channel you’ve connected
  4. Select the audio interface as the input device, and the input channel you’ve connected
  5. Select one of the above sample rates and audio buffer sizes
  6. Click the “Measure RTL” button
  7. Repeat steps 5-6 for each measurement
  8. Click “Log” tab and “Copy” button
  9. Paste results to a new conversation in “Audio Interfaces”
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