[stcredzero]

It baffles me that some people don't seem to care about their audio quality on calls.

Here's the thing about perception: A lot of it happens without your conscious knowledge.

One of the things about using Audacity as one's cheap studio software, is that you have to adjust for recording latency for multitrack. It's really easy to see how a part of perception is unconscious with the delay.

Almost no one is going to notice 5ms or below. At 20ms, many musicians are going to have this definite sense that something is off, but they can still hang. In between, it's a spectrum.

In order to introspect enough to notice things that are below conscious perception, some people require some training. This is also why audio snake oil works.

I use the wireless ModMic myself.

[kthejoker2]

> Almost no one is going to notice 5ms or below. At 20ms, many musicians are going to have this definite sense that something is off, but they can still hang. In between, it's a spectrum.

Reminded me of this article, easily one of the top 20 I've ever read (Brian Eno, Francis Crick, Italo Calvino, roller coasters, trepanation, time, death, drumming)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/25/the-possibilia...

> “I was working with Larry Mullen, Jr., on one of the U2 albums,” Eno told me. “ ‘All That You Don’t Leave Behind,’ or whatever it’s called.” Mullen was playing drums over a recording of the band and a click track—a computer-generated beat that was meant to keep all the overdubbed parts in synch. In this case, however, Mullen thought that the click track was slightly off: it was a fraction of a beat behind the rest of the band. “I said, ‘No, that can’t be so, Larry,’ ” Eno recalled. “ ‘We’ve all worked to that track, so it must be right.’ But he said, ‘Sorry, I just can’t play to it.’ ”

> Eno eventually adjusted the click to Mullen’s satisfaction, but he was just humoring him. It was only later, after the drummer had left, that Eno checked the original track again and realized that Mullen was right: the click was off by six milliseconds. “The thing is,” Eno told me, “when we were adjusting it I once had it two milliseconds to the wrong side of the beat, and he said, ‘No, you’ve got to come back a bit.’ Which I think is absolutely staggering.”

[stcredzero]

I also go to a game developer meetup. This developer was actually delaying all of the players, so that 40ms was their typical latency, no matter what. The developer had done some research with his multiplayer game, and concluded that most people didn't notice under 40ms round trip.

Some of the hardcore FPS players in the group could definitely tell!

[muro]

10ms is 3m, thus e.g. in an orchestra, 20ms latency is normal.

[stcredzero]

Yup. 30 feet or 10 meters is about the limit for comfortable improvisation. Really large orchestras can require musicians to compensate. I had to do this once when my school's band joined up with a National Guard band to form a huge orchestra for an 1812 Overture. (With actual cannon!)