What is a reasonable latency on a PC DAW when recording lead guitar?

ToneControl

I used to have a DSP Protools setup, and used the TDM amp sim plugins and FX, it felt fine for many years

Moving to non-native, with a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 interface, I found the latency noticeable. I stopped using it really, and started just recording the Fx'd output of the Axefx

Experimenting yesterday, the round-trip latency was about 12msec with 128 samples in the buffer
Some of the stuff I tried sounded OK. How much does each amp sim add to that?

What does everyone else do, and what tips can anyone give me?
I have the main amp sims
Guitar Rig 5
GTR 3.5
AMplitube 5
Eleven MkII

I was trying a demo of Helix Native

stratman3142

I get the following latency figures (for 44.1 kHz) using my Zoom UAC-2 as reported by Reaper. I've confirmed the RTL figures using the Oblique Audio RTL (round trip latency) ultility.

64 spls: In + Out = 1.4 + 4.0 = 5.4 ms RTL
96spls: In + Out = 2.1 + 4.7 = 6.8 ms RTL
128spls: In + Out = 2.9 + 5.4 = 8.3 ms RTL

I usually just set it to 64 spls and forget about it, because I haven't noticed any issues..

I can set it to 128spls and haven't noticed any obvious issues provided I'm wearing headphones. This is a bit subjective but at 128 spls I start to sense that things feel a bit off if I'm not wearing headphones, which I put down to the extra latency caused by the distance between my ears and my monitors. However, I can get used to it.

I'm not sure what extra latency is given by an ampsim itself. You could try a loop-back test including the ampsim using the Oblique Audio RTL utility. However, the ampsim might distort the test pulse and cause errors in the reading.
  

octatonic

This is why I don't use amp sim plugins and I don't like native systems for the most part.

With Pro Tools HDX I get 0.9ms latency at 96k.
When monitoring the MTRX off hardware then I think it is 1-3 samples.
Or if I am using a native system then I monitor the guitar amp or Axe FX off hardware and the latency is down to a handful of samples.
Running through the buffer is almost always unacceptably bad for me.

Ideally you want it down to 3-5ms.
I can definitely feel 10ms.

octatonic

ToneControl said:

How much does each amp sim add to that?

There are too many factors at play here for a simple answer.

PolarityMan

5ms feels nice to me, 10ms is manageable and I will resort to that if I'm running tons of other stuff in the project and can still get quadtracks fine.  

Monitoring at lower volume can help a little as you will then be hearing more of the attack of the strings rather than the monitoring.

ToneControl

just found a great thread you guys already had here
Latency Tolerance - Studio & Recording Discussions on theFretBoard

personalnadir

I’m using the Audient Sono which has a DSP mixer roundtrip latency (in to out) of 2.9ms - 4.6ms with Two Notes cab sim running. 

Works really well for me, never noticed any issues and the reason why I’m holding onto it for guitar