Music Production
Latency
Latency is the delay between an action or incoming sound and the sound you hear from an audio system. It can make recording or playing a software instrument feel late.
Latency is a delay in an audio path, usually measured in milliseconds. When you sing into an audio interface and monitor through a DAW, conversion, buffering and processing take time before the sound reaches your headphones. This input-to-output journey is called round-trip latency.
Buffer size
A computer handles audio in blocks called buffers. Smaller buffers usually reduce delay but leave less time to finish each block, increasing the risk of clicks or dropouts. Larger buffers give demanding sessions more room to process. Sample rate, drivers and plug-ins also affect the total delay; buffer size alone does not describe it.
Monitoring choices
Direct monitoring routes the live input through the interface without the computer's round trip. It can make recording feel immediate, but does not include effects running only in the DAW. Avoid listening to both direct and delayed software monitoring unless that combination is intentional.
For a software synthesizer, direct monitoring cannot bypass the computer that generates the instrument's sound. Use a stable buffer setting and avoid unnecessary high-latency processing while playing. Playback compensation can align recorded tracks, but cannot make a live performer hear a processed signal before the processing is finished.