[LAU] Applying effects when recording electric guitars: before or after recording?

[Cedric Roux]

----- "Dale Powell" <dj_kaza at hotmail.com> wrote:

> >
> > The only difference is that you can push hard on the box with your
> > foot while you play live.
> >
> 
> Disagree! Effects pedals and the like have almost no round-trip
> latency (through soundcard, to the processor, and back for monitoring)
> and usually a much lower processing time (especially if they are
> analogue!) both of which are very important points when you are
> listening to the effected path while playing.

okay, I half-agree with that. The latency problem...

On one hand it is, indeed, a difference. The computer gets some data
in, in chunks, process it, and sends that back to physical world. All
is in the chunk's size, which introduces some delay. Right.

But! did you actually try to play the guitar and use a linux-based effects chain?
I tried guitarix. With 1024 samples of latency I notice some delay. Below I
don't notice anything. 256 is fine. Go down to 64 and it's psychologically
similar to no delay at all. There were links about latency issues on the
lists a few weeks ago. So yeah, latency. But below a given threshold you
don't feel latency at all.

So there again, just try and see/hear what happens. I am personally not
disturbed by a bit of latency (a bit being 256 samples at 44.1KHz).