Latency (audio) - Latency in Broadcast Audio

Latency in Broadcast Audio

Audio latency can be experienced in broadcast systems where someone is contributing to a live broadcast over a satellite or similar link with high delay, where the person in the main studio has to wait for the contributor at the other end of the link to react to questions. Latency in this context could be between several hundred milliseconds and a few seconds. Dealing with audio latencies as high as this takes special training in order to make the resulting combined audio output reasonably acceptable to the listeners. Wherever practical, it is important to try to keep live production audio latency low throughout the production system in order to keep the reactions and interchange of participants as natural as possible. A latency of 10 milliseconds or better is the target for audio circuits within professional production structures, local circuits should ideally have a latency of 1 millisecond or better.