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Confused: no audio lag on BT headphones on YouTube, but big lag playing my music apps
Using my BT headphones with my M1 iPad on YouTube I have zero lag between video and audio. Turn off BT and exactly the same sync.
Using any of my music apps there is a painful lag between the note gesture and the sound, tried on Pure Piano, iFretless, Chords, iReal Pro. Turn off BT and the lag vanishes instant.
Do others have the same? Why such a big difference in latency? Any solution?
Comments
When watching video with Bluetooth headphones, your device introduces a small delay to the video to match the latency in the headphones, so they appear in sync.
This can’t happen when you’re making the music because you’re playing in real time. There’s no way round it unfortunately.
And Bluetooth Audio lags because it's collected in blocks and compressed for transmission. So the latency is the block time, plus the compress/transmit/uncompress time.
Hello!
We had this same issue when I set up IEM system for my wife (director of our community band). I purchased a set of Bluetooth earbuds (TOZO A1) and they sounded great, but they stole the audio from my audio interface! I then got a Bluetooth transmitter to solve the audio porting issue, but the music was off about one beat due to the latency. I did some reading and discovered “aptX Low Latency” audio codec (which the transmitter supported, but the TOZO’s did not). See this link: https://www.aptx.com/aptx-low-latency
I found a Bluetooth headset that supports “aptX LL” and everything works fine now.
The apTX LL site says that it has 40ms of added latency (that will be on top of the latency due to the audio buffers used by the system) that is a lot of latency for recording applications, imo. For comparison, 40ms is about the latency added when using a 2048 buffer size. That seems like a lot of added latency.
Your mileage may vary, but to me (for realtime playing) the 10 ms you get at a 512 buffer is pretty noticeable. When I record guitar parts, I find even that much latency irritating but tolerable if I needed. YMMV.
Yep, read all that tech stuff also. I’m also talking about “real-time” applications. We’re running backing tracks (9 stems) being run by Audio Evolution, have a Zoom H2n Recorder that I’m using the 4Ch Surround Sound as the “room” mic, using AUM with TB Barricade to keep the Zoom in check and it’s all being run through a early iPad Air with iOS v12.4. We’re experiencing zero noticeable latency.
Are you just listening to the backing track over Bluetooth headphones then singing / playing into a mic?
That's why I can't stand BT headphones for making music and even aptX is too slow.
My personal acceptable limit is around 20..30ms delay from hitting a key or pad to hearing audio.
I guess I'll wait until Apple releases a musicians' iPad with a headphones port again, otherwise get me the latest Windows tablet now that MS has no chance but to support ARM as well 😅
The USB-C -> 3.5mm dongle is quite ok. Just 'gaffer tape' it so it will not break
OK, I'll think about it 😉
The quality is actually pretty decent too...
(The USB-C -> 3.5mm dongle I have for my M1 iPadPro provides way more ooompfff than the old Air 2's 3.5mm jack. The Lightning -> 3.5mm is on par with the iPad Air 2).
Is that for playback or is someone playing a a keyboard or guitar into it and having no noticeable latency?
It is hard for me to imagine that they advertise 40ms latency but a have none.
There were some rumours a little while back that Apple might implement new connectivity using some sort of NFC in the future. One reason was that Apple Music now offers high-res lossless audio and to be able to take advantage of that wirelessly needed more bandwidth than Bluetooth can offer. It was suggested that another benefit might be improved latency…
Interestingly, Gary Geaves, Apple’s VP of Acoustics, addressed the limitations of Bluetooth in an interview in 2021 saying that Apple would really like a wireless standard that allows for more bandwidth.
“Obviously wireless technology is critical for (VR) - things like the amount of latency you get when you move your head, and if that’s too long, between you moving your head and the sound changing or remaining static, it will make you feel quite ill, so we have to concentrate very hard on squeezing the most that we can out of the Bluetooth technology, and there’s a number of tricks we can play to maximize or get around some of the limits of Bluetooth. But it’s fair to say that we would like more bandwidth and… I’ll stop right there. We would like more bandwidth”, he smiles.
@zzrwood Indeed it's a matter of available bandwidth - Without lossy audio compression, Bluetooth could have much lower audio latency.
One more area where musicians could benefit from gamers' requests 😉