Why does new Haswell Macbook have double the Latency!?!?!?

I read the links... seems to me the latest OS has added a safety buffer. (along with all of the other buffers) It shouldn't affect users of semi-pro or pro audio hardware that supply their own drivers. If you're using a system compliant interface you will probably see the added latency.

I have to say... if anyone is using the Mac's internal audio for audio work you get what you deserve... Apple uses the same (cheap) audio chips as $200 PC's.

dolomick wrote:

For someone who uses lots of softsynths on long airplane rides, etc, this is still a bad development. It's not always convenient or feasible to take an external soundcard just so I can reclaim the lower latency I am used to on my 6 year old Macbook that I am trying to replace. Latency should be getting lower not higher as the OS and hardware supposedly improve.

I agree with you... the Mac OS is becoming huge and bulky as it tries to be a shopping mall, an advertiser and a one-size-fits-all OS. There are a lot more background processes running, real-time performance is suffering.

OSX is using buffers throughout the system to give the feel of increased speed, unfortunately, buffers are bad for real-time applications.

Well, if it's not an added buffer perhaps the delay is caused by a hardware/software conflict with the Haswell processor. Be sure and report this to Apple using Logic's built-in feedback, or register in the developers forum (same I.D.) and fill out a more extensive report.

It only seems to happen with the internal speaker, as soon as you plugin a headphone, the latency drops again. Do you really use the internal speaker for actual low-latency prelisten???

But doesn't the latency eventually come back with the headphones plugged in?

Tested. It lowers from 28ms without headphones to 18.2ms with headphones on my machine. Still unusable. Also noticed on this machine that for some reason it now has 8.68ms of INPUT Latency in Ableton. Where normally on my 2012 machine it has 0.00ms input latency.

None of these problems were present on any other macs before this generation. Something is obviously wrong if the latency changes with headphones plugged in or not. Also there should be no input latency at all, which there is now.

On my 2012 retina I can use the internal speakers with extremely low latency, and it doesn't change with headphones plugged in or not. It's always low latency, the way it's supposed to be. This is more of a problem than you may think.

On the phone with Apple Pro Audio right now

They weren't very helpful at all. They said the issue is under investigation and are working on it. So hopefully they'll be able to fix it. At least they know about it now. Still debating on keeping it or not

Your numbers don't make sense: 0.00ms has to be wrong. The input latency is based on the processing buffer size, which e.g. for 256 samples @ 44.1kHz is about 6ms. Plus some hardware latency would make 8.68ms plausible. 0.00ms is technically impossible. There is always an input buffer, there is always hardware.

And that the internal speaker has different latency can be explained with additional processing they do to make the speaker sound better. That is clearly more important than a few ms of latency in this case and more a feature than a bug.

Of course there is input latency, your 0.00 ms is incorrect.

I have Cubase on my PC, here's what it reports for a 128 sample buffer:

In addition to this unaddressed latency (apple keeps pretending that they don't know about it, yet several users have called repeatedly), there is also an issue with previewing sounds in finder: they take way too long to load, and without headphones/speakers plugged in the attack of samples is cut off when scrolling to the previously played sound. GET ON THIS APPLE.

Blueberry, no it's not incorrect. You're incorrect and also confused. I said INPUT latency. You're confusing that with OUTPUT latency. This is how it should look, from my 2012 retina machine. That's good latency with 0.00ms INPUT latenc. OMG HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? You said it wasn't.

Anyway it's not important. The INPUT latency is exactly what it sounds like, in this case it's the latency of the internal microphone. I turned that to no INPUT and it came back down to zero. Shocking right? The OVERALL latency (which is the real issue here) still remained at 19ms on the new machine. Where as you can see in the screenshot, it should be closer to this, so yes these new machines have higher latency, we already determined that a long time ago, thank you very much.

And also you don't know what you're talking about so please just stop. The internal speaker should not have any different latency like it does on these machines. Every other Mac before this new gen does not have this "feature". The machine featured in the screenshot above has EXACTLY THE SAME LATENCY WITH OR WITHOUT HEADPHONES PLUGGED IN. It's definitely not a feature, that's why Apple is investigating this. It's a hardware error or incompatibility. That would be the most pointless and useless "feature" in the history of anything ever. So just keep quiet while the grown-ups are talking next time. You literally have NO IDEA what you're talking about and are wrong about everything you said.

This conversation is over anyway, there's nothing more we can do. Apple is investigating it. I'm going back to making music, have a nice day. 🙂