[LAD] Android's 10 Millisecond Problem

[Len Ovens]

On Thu, 16 Apr 2015, John Hammen wrote:

> interesting article on Android's latency
>
> http://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency/
>
> via Hacker News news.ycombinator.com

What the article totally misses... Latency is about more than clearing 
audio path obsticles. Can the kernel be made lowlatency? What other 
proprietary globs might demand cpu/bus time with no regard for anything 
else? I am thinking about my experiences with my netbook (back when they 
made those) where the wifi made anything less than about 20ms (one way) 
impossible without xruns. Add bluetooth, and USB issues and who knows what 
else. Many of the android units are really cheap (sub $100 mark) and so 
must use the least expensive.... everything. The CPU may be yesterdays 
"super computer" but the rest is not. Lowlatency audio with artifacts is 
not going to help.

Yes the tablet I have (and my wife's phone) have way too much latency to 
be useful for anything beyond remote control of mixers etc. (I wouldn't 
want to do live fades that way :)

It will be interesting to see if Touch will be any better. (still uses the 
android kernel to make the most of the HW drivers.)



--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net