Yes, I remember reading about this a while back (I think on the music-dsp list).
The need to buffer audio this way must remain the final stumbling-block to
getting i/o latency down to the sample. The PC has been saddled with its history
of Adlib and Soundblaster cards, all using slow DMA channels which  don't work
properly with small buffers. I know that in principle DirectX is trying to
achieve this, by reading and writing directly to the same buffer used by the a/d
and d/a converters; though there still appears to be a residual latency, about
which I don't have any detailed information.

Is that low latency strictly using the PPCs internal audio hardware, or can it
be achieved with PCI-based cards too? 

Richard Dobson


Mike Berry wrote:
> 
> I wanted to point out here that in OS 8.1 Apple has reduced the sound output
> latency in the MacOS to 11.6 ms (512 sample frames) from 25 ms (probably due
> to the many cries over the years by RT audio developers).  When combined with
> the cooperative multi-tasking which allows us audio developers to hog the
> entire CPU, the MacOS makes a nice balance between UI and performance.
> --
> Mike Berry
> mikeb@nmol.com