[mikepurvis]

Is the speed of sound relevant in most recording scenarios? Assuming headphones and instrument/vocal mics that are within a few inches, then everything is traveling as electrical signals at the speed of light.

Or is this just meant as a visualization of latency in these scenarios versus what it would be like with musicians playing x ft apart from each other in a room?

[schroffl]

I recently played on an electronic drum set and it was absolutely fine with headphones. But when we hooked it up to the speakers across the room there was a very noticable delay (~5ms as we calculated) when hitting the pads with the stick.

Since I only used acoustic drums until then I never gave much thought to the idea of having your drums sound delayed. It was quite eye opening.

[simonjgreen]

It absolutely is. Many times when rigging halls for recording live events I've had to insert delay in to sub mixes to match latency to the back of the room. It's standard fair for a live audio tech (a thing I do on the side occasionally)

[boomlinde]

> Assuming headphones and instrument/vocal mics that are within a few inches

It is relevant, and monitoring via headphones or a floor speaker is a mitigation.

It's also a problem for large orchestras. If everyone else just plays along with what they hear from the people near them, the timing is going to be inconsistent across the orchestra pit even if you have some obvious audible reference like loud percussion. The mitigation is to orient yourself as much as possible around the visual cues from a conductor.

[mikepurvis]

That's a good point, and I'd imagine instruments like a church organ would suffer from this too, though I know in that case there are a bunch of other sources of delay, like the time it takes for the pipes to fill with air.

[ComputerGuru]

The latter. The point being that they are trained, comfortable, and proficient in those scenarios and the same translates to a (consistent!) software delay of up to 10ms.