I Just came across 2 good articles (although dated a couple of years) explaining the latency issues Android faces compared to iOS:
http://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/11/13 ... 5x-and-6p/
The Superpowered latency test app and benchmark results are also particularly interesting - those guys are doing a great job:
http://superpowered.com/latency
According to the results, a fine tuned Linux box gets roughly in the same ballpark as an iDevice (7ms roundtrip) whether the best an Android device can dream off is around 15 ms.
Better than last time I checked, but still not good enough
Let's try again in a couple years
Android Audio Latency explained & benchmarked
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Re: Android Audio Latency explained & benchmarked
And...here's a status update:
http://superpowered.com/android-audio-l ... -got-worse
Long story short: Google still doesn't care much about audio latency (although at least they seem to understand the question).
http://superpowered.com/android-audio-l ... -got-worse
Long story short: Google still doesn't care much about audio latency (although at least they seem to understand the question).
Re: Android Audio Latency explained & benchmarked
Thanks for this info. Your info helped prevent me from a purchasing disaster. Those chomebooks and the like are so cute, and tempting, but like you've been talking about... if they can't handle the right latency, it's just not worth it.gimmeapill wrote:I Just came across 2 good articles (although dated a couple of years) explaining the latency issues Android faces compared to iOS:
http://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/11/13 ... 5x-and-6p/
The Superpowered latency test app and benchmark results are also particularly interesting - those guys are doing a great job:
http://superpowered.com/latency
According to the results, a fine tuned Linux box gets roughly in the same ballpark as an iDevice (7ms roundtrip) whether the best an Android device can dream off is around 15 ms.
Better than last time I checked, but still not good enough
Let's try again in a couple years
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Re: Android Audio Latency explained & benchmarked
Happy this was helpful, but be careful with generalizations: ChromeOS is a whole different beast than Android (although Google is doing its best to blur the lines).protozone wrote:Thanks for this info. Your info helped prevent me from a purchasing disaster. Those chomebooks and the like are so cute, and tempting, but like you've been talking about... if they can't handle the right latency, it's just not worth it.
I didn't dive into the details, but I would assume the Chromebook Flip C302 listed in those benchmarks was reinstalled with Android X86, or was maybe running the latency test app in Android emulation mode.
As far as Chromebooks go, you might get decent latency enabling Developer Mode and running Linux (no idea if they would be as good as a finely tuned PC though). It all boils down to what are your application and latency requirements...
Cheers,
LX
Re: Android Audio Latency explained & benchmarked
Ah, thanks for explaining the differences. I didn't know that.gimmeapill wrote:Happy this was helpful, but be careful with generalizations: ChromeOS is a whole different beast than Android (although Google is doing its best to blur the lines).protozone wrote:Thanks for this info. Your info helped prevent me from a purchasing disaster. Those chomebooks and the like are so cute, and tempting, but like you've been talking about... if they can't handle the right latency, it's just not worth it.
I didn't dive into the details, but I would assume the Chromebook Flip C302 listed in those benchmarks was reinstalled with Android X86, or was maybe running the latency test app in Android emulation mode.
As far as Chromebooks go, you might get decent latency enabling Developer Mode and running Linux (no idea if they would be as good as a finely tuned PC though). It all boils down to what are your application and latency requirements...
Cheers,
LX
Even most of the folks at the stores that sell 'em don't seem to know the differences either (where I live).
I think the ChromeBooks need ARM Linux to run? It might be fun to try, but only if I could run the same programs and didn't have to compile a bunch of stuff; (i'm afraid of compiling).
thanks
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Re: Android Audio Latency explained & benchmarked
Don't rely on the local sales guys for any technical advice, they are not supposed to know anything about Linux or the specifics of computer music (unless it's your lucky day of course).protozone wrote: Even most of the folks at the stores that sell 'em don't seem to know the differences either (where I live).
I think the ChromeBooks need ARM Linux to run? It might be fun to try, but only if I could run the same programs and didn't have to compile a bunch of stuff; (i'm afraid of compiling).
But you'll find plenty of relevant info in this forum
As for Chromebooks: they can be based on x86 or ARM cpus (the c302 is x86), so you should choose a distribution that matches your processor architecture in any case. Whether you would have to compile anything is a different question.
This is anyway not something I would recommend to a beginner.
First you should probably assess if Linux fits your purpose for audio production in the first place, and if so what are your latency requirements.
For that the path of least resistance would very likely be one of the live distros out there on any PC you can get your hands on:
https://libremusicproduction.com/articl ... stribution
But I digress, let's get back to Android: to sum it up, latency on the platform is generally not suitable for real time audio, and this is not about to change as long as Google doesn't invest some serious resources to tackle the problem.