Yeah I think the physical tactile nature of individual pedals are great. It’s makes things like order of effects obvious and extremely intuitive.
But it’s definitely going to be more expensive than a multi-effects unit. If you want amp modelling too, then you almost certainly want to get a multi-effects unit.
Also, many souls (and their cash) have been lost to the rabbit hole of colourful little boxes 
I’m not convinced that article is entirely right, although it does say that tolerance varies, and people notice it or are more intolerant of it with IEMS compared to wedge monitors (which, in theory, should always have worse latency than IEMs).
I’m not sure it destroys your ability to play on the beat with a drummer, but I definitely think there’s a point where it starts to affect it. I think most musicians can adjust (which is, effectively, what we are constantly doing with bell ringing as we have a latency of around 1 full second and have to wait around 2 seconds before we can make adjustments for a particular error, as there are two strokes) but, for a normal musical instrument, I think it starts to feel a little off.
As an example, I’ve done some online jamming with Jamulus where the latency was around 30-40ms. It was VERY obvious, even to the point of being clearly audible between the local string noise and the sound. You do learn to adjust to the sound not being exactly when you pluck the string and, ultimately, end up playing everything slightly earlier. However, the adjustment isn’t entirely comfortable.
Incidentally, the advice for this situation is to wear good headphones and to not monitor locally, but monitor the delayed sound.
And I think this is the point: it’s not that you can obviously hear a difference, but that there’s something about the feel that’s not the same.
I think there’s also a psychological thing where our brains are tuned for, and used to, the speed of sound and, combined with the other acoustic affects, anticipate the latency if we know where the real amp is. Delay sensitivity is also a very important part of our hearing, along with other acoustic effects, and influences our ability to locate sounds.
When we wear headphones, there’s a different acoustic environment to using an amp in a room: the speakers are right next to your ears (often in the ear canal) and there’s no room ambience.
I think it’s interesting that Boss, with their Waza Air headphones, seems to have successfully created a capability where they’ve transformed a headphone experience into something that has more of the feel of an amp in a room. I suspect they’ve used some ambisonic techniques to achieve this, which use, amongst other methods, tiny variations in the delay of the signal to change our perception of the location of the sound source.
Cheers,
Keith
Another positive side for the audio interface setup:
Gotcha.
I would start here.
Concern about processing latency for tech systems is overrated (even if you can tell the difference). You always need to compare it to the speed of sound through air.
It takes about 30ms for sound to travel 10m, so even a low latency amp has real latency to the ears.
…it’s all a digression from hardware vs software anyway. IMHO latency just shouldn’t be one of the factors in deciding “hardware” (which in the case of multifx units, are running software on them anyway) vs PC/Mac plugins.
Wrt latency, it’s both “a thing” and “not a thing” IMO. It’s correct that you (or I at least) feel latency when it’s too high… like in the 20-30ms range. Then it’s unplayable for me. However, you simply have to install the drivers that comes with your AI and understand that you have to pick the ASIO driver (on Windows at least, not sure about Linux or Mac), and then you generally don’t have to worry about it. Buffer sizes etc I would consider fine tuning, which you can do once you’re more comfortable with the whole thing.
As for hardware vs software, obviously a personal preference. I understand both sides, and use both myself. I understand how a real amp with real effects can sound more “real” or “better” to many. That comes down to air being moved, sound coming from a real guitar speaker (rather than full-range studio monitor - or, for many even worse, headphones) and the fact that the sound is not (generally) projected directly into your face or ears. For many the “amp in a room” sound really means hearing a reverberated sound of your guitar, bouncing off walls. The direct tone will hit you in the back, or knees…
But I think the software solution makes for a better practice setup! I’m a believer in the value of frequently recording yourself to monitor progress, and even if you don’t want to record… for me effective practice is playing a lot of songs, either playing over the actual song or using backing tracks. For me, that is so much more easy to do with a software setup than hardware. Balancing volume between the backing track and a real amp is just way harder for me. And you’ll need to be at the PC for that kind of practice anyway to be able to adjust tempo of what you’re playing over, mark up something for transcription etc etc.
So for me - practice will always be at a PC, using (at least partially) a software solution. Then I play my loud amps with the band.
Thanks man! That’s awesome that it can also be connected to the pc… Do you however experience any latency when connecting to the DAW in your PC? As in, is it good for playing along to backing tracks and record yourself or does it get a bit messy with some latency/delay
Almost every multifx system out there can be connected to a PC via USB and used as an audio interface.
This gives you the flexibility to practice at a computer using software, or to practice away from your computer with just the multifx system (and appropriate headphones or speakers).
When you do connect to a computer, you get nearly zero latency monitoring (hearing yourself play) plus you can play backing tracks from the computer. Some multifx systems let you connect a tablet or phone via USB or Bluetooth so you don’t even have to use a computer for backing track playback.
No more than with any other audio interface.
It’s just as good as any other audio interface.
In fact, it’s arguably better as the monitoring has negligible latency regardless of your computer capability or settings.
Cheers,
Keith
Exactly what Keith said, it’s very good.
Regarding what I play into, it’s not a computer I use my iPad and GarageBand, it’s easy to do and works well - judge for yourself! This is done using Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar and Drums from Sonicake and GarageBand plus a low frequency hum from a GarageBand synth for extra ambience.
Latency is a matter of degree and personal preference. Any bit of noticeable latency is unacceptable to me. I switched to a Mac & Garageband from a more powerful PC and Reaper because of latency issues (yes I tried the THINGS and it was still unacceptable). Now I’m cooking with grease. 
Darrell
Very pretty piece. Enjoying the ambience.
Brian
