Recording latency is completely irrelevant unless you are monitoring from the DAW (for instance, monitoring the sound from a guitar FX plugin). If you are ādirect monitoringā from the audio hardware, it really doesnāt matter (other than making sure the DAW does latency compensation).
Too many people obsess over latency and trying to tweak their settings to reduce latency as much as possible when they donāt need to. in fact, reducing latency too far places a strain on the PC and can result in dropouts (on Linux they call these āxrunsā and, in Ardour and Mixbus, these are marked within the timeline if they occur).
If you arenāt monitoring via the DAW, set your buffer settings higher to prevent this. It will increase latency, but that should not matter one jot.
Itās a bit disingenuous to frame every gear purchase as a syndrome. I have a number of hobbies including gardening/orchard, whittling, home brewing, sourdough bread baking, and fishing to name a few. All of these endeavors require certain tools to accomplish the related tasks. As hobbies go, playing guitar is small potatoes compared to things like golf, flying, or travel. So donāt let peer pressure or slogans detour you from buying āthingsā to accomplish your goals.
I bought Behringer HPS3000 headphones listed at $14.90 on Amazon. They have served me well (so I bought two).
For the iPhone mic I bought a Shure MV88. The app for it is really good as well. The newer MV88+ should be even better.
As for latency, you do you. I donāt need it and donāt want it. I found it less than ideal having started with a Mac and Garageband where there was zero, and then buying a high powered PC, futzing with drivers and trying multiple DAWs where there was a lot. I quickly went back to a Mac and never looked back. Whatās the best tool and bang for the buck? For me itās the Mac/Garageband duo.
I searched for FR Heaphones on the jungle app only to discover that the headphones I bought years ago for my pc are āstudioā ones. Tbh I was very pleased with them in the first place, but a little disappointed that thereās not an even more wonderful auditory treat waiting for me
I misunderstood what a plugin mic for the phone was- I presumed it was an app that modifies the phone mic to something cool the Shure sure looks nice, but my croaking will have to put up with my USB mic for the foreseeable futureā¦
As for the DAW and platformā¦ You are probably right regarding bang for the buck, and if I was starting out again from scratch with music or visual art in mind, I might indeed choose to go down the fruity path. But I already had the pc (so only had the Reaper fee) and donāt really fancy shelling out for and learning a new platform.
Still, good to get othersā opinions.
(ps. You do know that our Dutch pal is only egging people on and having a good-natured laugh when he raises the G-word, dontcha? )
Happy hobbies at the weekend, Sir!
To be clear, thereās no such thing as zero latency. For a given AI, a Mac will typically have just as much latency as a well set up Windows machine, and that will never, ever be zero.
But I agree that getting drivers and low-latency to work well on Windows can be a faff. Which is why I donāt use Windows most of the time.
My point was that a lot of the time people donāt actually need low-latency audio.
And, even on a Mac, setting the buffers low to achieve it puts uneccessary load on the computer, which can result in audio dropouts.
I hear you. The Mac + Garageband + iMovie and integration with iPhone (Air Drop) is worth starting over IMHO. The ease, intuitiveness and speed of going from playing + recording to upload to Soundcloud or Youtube is pretty amazing. The most valuable aspect of the guitar hobby, for me, is my time. As always, live your best lives.
