Are the 3ms measured or is it just what OSX tells you ?
A buffer of 3ms at 48kHz holds 144 samples. That means shoveling 144 fresh samples (per channel, ofc) ~333 times a second and sending them to the sound card immediately. That may be possible if your sound card supports resampling (and minor magic) and only without a sound server (OSX uses one). Either that or you have an impressive cpu. Feel free to correct me at any point.
edit: PS This is only the program->sound_card part. Programs themselves add a ton of latency and sound cards add to it as well. In reality even 10ms is beyond perfect conditions.
Stepping frame by frame through the video I took (https://youtu.be/IHmC-q_iPiE) at the point where I press the key to sound a note, there's a 4 to 5 frame latency until I can visually see the speaker membrane move, so that's about 33 to 41 milliseconds.
Bitwig is set to 64 samples (1.45 ms) latency.
Since Windows XP Windows and Audio Latency has not been an issue and both platforms require a lot of end user work to get lower and lower latency. The issue is really only significant for recording audio and not as much when doing live audio. Any modern platforms latency light years ahead of 2000 audio production.
The idea that Mac is better for audio or video because of the OS is marketing and not based on real life professional use of the platforms.
Core Audio literally-just-works with low latency and aggregated devices.
DAWs on Windows still either use MME/DX for north of 50ms, often 100ms+ latency or ASIO (exclusive device usage and no aggregation, assuming your hardware even has ASIO drivers because ASIO4ALL is at best rickety) on Windows.
I don't know what you think is going on with OS X, but I suggest re-evaluating your assumptions.
The problem there, being a closed environment where the manufacturer dictates when the product must die, is rather the drivers life. If they don't update the driver your pricey gear turns into a doorstop overnight. Case in point: Tascam US122 audio interface. Under Linux I can still use it; far from being the best around but it works. Under Windows it became unusable when they stopped supporting it years ago.
Hang on, no way, you take one or the other. Aggregating devices adds a huge chunk of latency and, frankly, I don't think is that exciting a feature anyway. Maybe for your specific setup, but generally speaking you should buy gear that suits your needs, rather than try to cobble something together from existing devices.
Having used OSX and Win7 (on the same machine) I would agree CoreAudio is less hassle and definitely lower latency - IIRC, OSX reported just over half the latency of W7 on the same setup.
That said, I'm not sure what you think is going on with ASIO, since any class compliant USB audio interface has compatible drivers inherently..
As the other commentor said, Core Audio "just works" for low latency. MIDI is great as well. Windows still needs third party ASIO drivers.
If a USB MIDI controller gets unplugged during a set on Windows, I need to restart Ableton. On Mac, you just plug it back in and it picks up immediately, even the audio interface will do that.
> The issue is really only significant for recording audio and not as much when doing live audio.
What? Latency is a non-issue for recording audio, and A HUGE ISSUE for live usage. Any half-decent DAW supports latency compensation on non-realtime tracks. You can record a vocal track when every other instrument has 10s of seconds of latency, as long as your monitoring for the vocals has none. When playing live, every single track cannot have latency.
Edit, hell many of the best audio interfaces don't even support Windows as a platform.
Give this a read - https://www.presonus.com/community/Learn/The-Truth-About-Dig...
Live audio if you have above the human perception of latency you are in the realm of 20 or 30 ms.
> Edit, hell many of the best audio interfaces don't even support Windows as a platform.
What can I say marketing works and this perceived Mac superior creative types tool is believed by most people. In actual Professional world there are plenty of Windows based studios that won Emmy's, Oscars and Grammys.
