An update on Android's audio latency • Hacker News Board

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#31

Post by Hemospectrum » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

deadmutex wrote: post #22

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #18

Too little, too late, I'm afraid. The improvement is great, but I think the audio professionals jumped ship long ago to Apple, and they're not going back. I know of several music professionals plugging into their Macbooks or iPads as part of the pre-amp, but I don't know if any using Android. Google sat on this for way too long while Apple courted the creative professionals, and for any that have already made the upf…

Perhaps. Though I wonder if every musician afford Macbooks or iPads. These things are not cheap, especially if you consider earnings of non-US based musicians, etc. Disclaimer: Googler, but opinions are my own.

Musical instruments aren’t too cheap either. Drummers and guitar players can get good stuff secondhand, but most synthesizers will run you way more than a mid-range MacBook and a copy of Logic. God help you if you need a piano...

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#32

Post by mellosouls » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

Off topic, but would be nice if they could do something - presumably far simpler - about the lack of fine-grained volume control.

It might be a niche case, but it's really frustrating using the various sleep-related audio apps at night with earphones and not being able to select a minimum volume that is both loud enough to hear but not so loud it keeps you awake (example: Audible with a sleep timer).

I'm sure there are other uses for the finer control as well.

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#33

Post by Kuinox » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #5

Kuinox wrote: post #3

"Popular smartphone" list only samsung smartphone.

Perhaps you should read the article in full. It clearly says the most popular Android smartphones in 2021 are: Samsung Redmi Oppo Huawei Vivo Which probably account for the majority of Android smartphone sales.

Perhaps you should read the article, "Latency of the most popular android phones in Jan 2017" list only 20 samsungs.

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#34

Post by Kuinox » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

wffurr wrote: post #20

Kuinox wrote: post #3

"Popular smartphone" list only samsung smartphone.

That’s true for the 2017 chart and probably was true in 2017. The 2020 chart lists Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi.

In 2017 huawei was huge (in popularity), even bigger than samsung.

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#35

Post by thomasahle » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

hnuser123456 wrote: post #24

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #10

The figure of most interest to someone playing an electronic instrument is "tap-to-touch latency". The article indicates a minimum of 43 ms for that (28 round trip latency - 5 audio input latency + 20 touch latency). That's like ten times what you'd hope for.

deleted

In case of audio it doesn't really matter how fast the display updates though? Unless your numbers are for the digitizer and not the screen.

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#36

Post by thomasahle » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:23 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #17

This is way better than it used to be (I measured half a second latency in 2012: https://www.jefftk.com/p/android-sound-synthesis-and-latency ) but it is still too high to let you use an Android device as a musical instrument. This is something iPhones have always been able to do, and one of my biggest disappointments with Android. (Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

What are the equivalent numbers for iPhone? Touch to audio and round-trip times?

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#37

Post by dmix » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #18

Too little, too late, I'm afraid. The improvement is great, but I think the audio professionals jumped ship long ago to Apple, and they're not going back. I know of several music professionals plugging into their Macbooks or iPads as part of the pre-amp, but I don't know if any using Android. Google sat on this for way too long while Apple courted the creative professionals, and for any that have already made the upf…

There will always be a niche that wants to do music production or engineering and can't afford Apple productions. Newbies or living outside the western world for example.

Just because the pros have merged towards a single brand doesn't mean that the only other smartphone monopoly won't benefit greatly from offering other high quality solutions.

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#38

Post by fireattack » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

hnuser123456 wrote: post #24

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #10

The figure of most interest to someone playing an electronic instrument is "tap-to-touch latency". The article indicates a minimum of 43 ms for that (28 round trip latency - 5 audio input latency + 20 touch latency). That's like ten times what you'd hope for.

deleted

We're talking about tap-to-audio-output latency though, so it has nothing to do with display part of the screen.

And there is no "touch" on PC generally speaking.. input latency would be on mouse or keyboard.

I think you're talking different thing from the topic.

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#39

Post by matchbok » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

5 years of work, and still bad compared to what iOS had 10 years ago. Impressive.

Re: An update on Android's audio latency

#40

Post by com2kid » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:30 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #26

com2kid wrote: post #25

It'd be nice if something was done about the extra 100-200ms (!!) of latency that Bluetooth headsets can add[1]. I understand this is largely a problem from the manufacturer problem, but I'd love to see Google lead the way with some sort of certification program, or even make their own low cost BT chipset for 3rd party headphones to use, to improve the situation. Of course Android is already world's better than deskt…

There are low latency bluetooth protocols, if you sort by latency on rtings for aptx-LL you can see some headsets are down below 40ms. Of course, this relies on both the host and the headset having support for the protocol and being engineered well. SBC and aptX just aren't designed for low latency, and low latency is something that can't be hacked into every codec after the fact.

I'll argue that an device meant for phone calls (which is where bluetooth audio started out!) should aim for low latency by default. I also understand that the CPU/Latency/Memory trade offs made over a decade ago are not the same one's we'd make now.

Doesn't change the fact that the same device can have a 3x latency difference between platforms with the same codec.

Google went and developed VP9 as a royalty free codec in the AV space, they should do something similar for Bluetooth. Right now if I'm on a video call with someone and we both have BT headsets, it is very possible that there is a 500ms audio latency!