I was having trouble getting rid of the clicks when playing Pianoteq live through my digital piano.  On the ProductionForums, it was suggested that I increase my latency to 20 ms.  I had always thought that one had to have 5 ms or less latency or the delay would be objectionable.

Sound travels at approximately 1126 fps in dry air (343 metres per second).  So in one millisecond (1.00 ms), sound travels 1.126 feet or .34 metres.

If I was playing on a stage 32.8 feet wide (10 metres) with one other musician on the opposite side of the stage from me, then his sound would take 32.8 ft divided by 1.126 ft/second = 29 milliseconds (10/.343) to reach me.

29 milliseconds?  That's way more than 5 milliseconds, so I guess we wouldn't be able to play together would we?  But this happens all the time with groups on a large stage, so what's going on?

And how do large school bands marching down the street that often stretch out over a length of 50 or 100 feet ever play together?

We might want to explore this further.

To solve my problem, I set the latency on my sound card (using ASIO) to 20 ms, and couldn't "feel" the difference between 20 ms and 5 ms.

The reason that sports events (like the Olympics) use electronic timing as opposed to humans with a stopwatch, is because humans can't be relied upon to operate a stopwatch accurately enough.  When the swimmer hits the "end" the signal is sent at the speed of light (which is a bit faster than sound).  If humans timed an extremely close race, we would likely give the gold medal to the second place finisher.

Note to Etalmor - my processor is a dual core AMD, and at 10 ms latency I get clicks, but not at 20 ms.

Glenn

EDIT (11 Jan 09):  Clarification of the above is in order.

The click problem isn't likely my soundcard as it's an EMU 1820M.  Before I first attempted to use Pianoteq live (through the keyboard), I dutifully read the manual, and mistakenly thought that I had to use Pianoteq as a
VSTi.

I downloaded VSTHost, set everything up, and it worked but the latency was horrible and simply unworkable.

By accident I discovered it worked when VSTHost wasn't loaded and working; then I tried ASIO with my soundcard, and discovered that even with the latency set at 20 ms, I couldn't discern the time delay between hitting a key and hearing the sound.

I've tried the latency at 50 ms, but this IS noticeable.

there are two subjects i want to remark about - and hear the opinions of the good people of this forum :-) :

1) 5ms

is not negligible at all when it comes to playing in a band. Last night I took pianoteq to band practice because i thought of using it for our first performance. It is jazz, and just like any other genre - timing is critical.
I use pianoteq alot while performing. But for this band's rehearsals i used to use only my Roland FP-3's internal piano preset, because I was l lazy to log around my laptop.
The band is starting to sound really tight - but as i was using my laptop - i had severe timing problems due to the 5ms latency. I really feel it and it's hard to keep a tight groove. Other pianists who have tried my setup have felt it as well.
So - I decided not to use pianoteq for this band. Which is a shame because I really love pianoteq.

So this is not a "complaint" about pianoteq. It is about using vst instruments for live band playing.
Does anyone share these thoughts with me, have any suggestions? going below 5ms i start hearing clicks. (my laptop processor is a 1.8ghz dual core amd).

2) should i really use an external sound card?

All the product advertisements talk about low latency (as low as 5ms) again 5ms is not enough for me, and i think that the bottleneck in pianoteq's case is the processor.
With ASIO4ALL i get 5ms from my internal sound card.

The other thing is about sound. I understand that an external sound card may be better for recording, especially the 24/96 cards. Although I do get nice results when i use my internal sound card's line in with a simple mixer (that has mic preamps). But for playback - why should i get significantly better sound from an external sound card? when i play an mp3 from my computer through a PA system it sounds fine - I don't think its worse than a portable cd player.
I did once try an m-audio external sound card with pianoteq, and i don't think i heard any noticable differences ...

I talked about the upsides that people usually refer to in external sound cards, and i am yet to be convinced.
Regarding the down sides for live performance:
1) it is something extra to worry about - carry around, hook up, place, setup, and care for
2) it is an extra layer of hardware that could go wrong, have buggy software, etc ...

what am i missing ?

happy new year
-- Eran

Latest drivers yes.

Not tried re-installing drivers because they are working fine with all the other applications. Never had any kind of problems... Strange.

Have to do some more testing.

What soundcard\audio interface are you using?

Just guessing, based on my experience with other programs and drivers, but have you tried:

1. Updating all of the drivers.
2. Deleting old versions of the drivers.
3. Making sure that the new drivers are active? Assuming that you're using Windows, going into the Control Panel, double-clicking on Sounds and Audio devices, clicking on Audio, and setting the driver that you want to use in both the Sound playback and Sound recording fields. (It's wise to do this if you've upgraded a driver, even for the same soundcard\device. If the drivers show up as the defaults, change them to something else, and then click OK. Then go back into the same panel and change them to the correct drivers again. I know...)

Contrary to other sound card types, i.e. PCMCIA/Cardbus,  I have never had crash problems with the Tascam in standalone. In fact that device causes more problems when used with Sonar Home Studio 2004 in DXi synth mode where I get unstable pitch results on playback.

If using under FLStudio, there's no problem, but stand alone version crashes almost everytime I change buffer size.

I've heard good opinion about MOTU UltraLite FW interface. I have high desire to get it, however it is 549$ on Amazon.com while over 1000$ here in EU/Poland, so waiting for an occasion to visit US.

And as a disclaimer, all this advanced computer audio stuff is completely new to me and I am often very confused and overwhelmed by the sheer options, variables and parameters (let alone what they all mean and how they interact...).

I have found one issue that I haven't seen before and is presumably attributable to the Tascam. In Cakewalk sequencer, when playing back a MIDI track through any DXi synth including Pianoteq, at whichever point I start playback the pitch level varies crazily for several seconds before settling down to play correctly. Exporting the same song to Wave or MP3 works and plays OK.

As another forum contributor has said, cakewalk is sending an instruction to Tascam to play a note, so its up to the Tascam to actually produce the right pitch but there aren't too many parameters to change.

Has anybody seen/heard this before and have any explanations please?

Of course, if this is in regards to a file already on your hard drive, it's simpler to just import the audio into your sequencer of choice. But I assume that's not all you're trying to do.

About the loop-back situation: What sequencer are you using?

I am using Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 but this is not a sequancer specific issue; I get the same results using Audacity.

Still very happy with the Tascam. No issues using with PT and I can use any number of  other applications whilst simultanously listening to audio without any interuptions.

About the loop-back situation: What sequencer are you using?