Example DAW - Delays
Microphone
d1
t
Playback
MIDI
Monitor
Recording
MIDI
dead line
First of all; we need to define our target at which we want to sound everything together. Since we are interested in the mixer’s output we’ll use that.
•The mixer adds some delay, d1 to all our sources. in case of this analog desk this more of a theoretical issue though
•The microphone adds some more due to acoustics
•The playback stream is more interesting for us. We have buffering in the application, ALSA library, PCI buss and D/A converters
•Flow is similar for the MIDI stream, but in this example the MIDI device is relatively slow; a thing to consider!
•Similar to monitoring (including acoustic delay) and recording, where we again see the effect of buffering etc.

Adding a 2nd external midi device gives an interesting situation. The 2nd device faster than the 1st, resulting in different delay. Special handling in the MIDI dispatcher is required to compensate for this.