User Guide

Maestro Low Latency mixing (continued)
Figure A
To illustrate the effect of latency, Figure A depicts the typical signal path of a vocal overdub session. A vocalist sings into
a microphone, which is routed to an analog to digital converter, then to the audio software application for recording. In
the software application, the vocalist’s live signal is mixed with the playback of previously recorded tracks, routed to a
digital to analog converter, and finally to the vocalist’s headphones. A slight delay accumulates at each conversion stage,
while a much greater amount of delay occurs through the software application, resulting in the vocalist hearing his
performance in headphones delayed by several milliseconds.
Figure B
By routing the hardware input directly to the hardware output and mixing in playback as shown in Figure B, it’s possible
to provide the vocalist a headphone monitoring signal with a much shorter delay. First, the signal being recorded (in this
case, a vocal mic) is split just after the A/D stage and routed to both the software application for recording and directly
back to the hardware outputs without going through the latency-inducing software. This creates a low latency path from
mic to headphones. Next, a stereo mix of playback tracks is routed to the low latency mixer and combined with the
hardware input(s). This allows the performer to hear himself while listening to playback tracks without a confusing delay
in order to comfortably record overdubs.
Note that the software application’s mixer is used to set a stereo mix of playback tracks while the low latency mixer is
used to set the balance between the stereo playback mix and the hardware inputs.
Operation - Apogee ONE User’s Guide
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