Yet another bluetooth/wireless question

[tlarson58]

'Tripped over my headphone cord this morning. Never a fun experience.

I would like to hook up a Bluetooth transmitter out of the interface's Headphone Out jack. Will there be latency issues?

The rig...

A closer look..

[BatUtilityBelt]

Bluetooth imparts latency, but how much varies. For that reason alone, I stay wired. I would stay away from any that don't tell you how low their latency can be. I have seen some that advertise I think around 50 ms (1/20th of a second).

[tlarson58]

Bumpity.

[Forecaster]

I tried using my bluetooth transmitter on an old 80's yamaha keyboard w/dinky speakers. Ran it to a pretty good bluetooth speaker that luckily can also do patch cable. Latency was awful. Too awful to continue playing w/out bending your brain. Strange--I use the same transmitter/speaker for television sometimes and there's really no synch issue w/ the dialogue.

[Milkman]

You could try getting RF headphones instead... they (almost never) suffer from latency issues, in my experience. Personally, I just use longer, shorter, straighter or curlier cords and try to randomize the curse words I use when that doesn't help. It's good to mix things up a little.

[glasshand]

In my experience, yeah, Bluetooth latency is going to be too much to make it worthwhile. Bluetooth latency seems like it can depend on a lot of factors, but if https://www.headphonesty.com/2020/07/fi ... eadphones/ can be trusted, it can be anywhere between 34 ms and 300 ms: "In a regular wired connection, the typical audio latency is 5-10 ms. In a wireless connection, Bluetooth latency can go anywhere from an ideal 34 ms (aptX LL) up to 100-300 ms for true wireless earbuds and headphones."

To think about what this means, imagine that you're playing a piece that's 120 bpm. That means each quarter note is 500 ms, and a 16th note is 125 ms, a 32nd note is 64 ms, etc. If your Bluetooth latency is 100ms, that's like lagging almost an entire 16th note.

[tlarson58]

@glasshand

You lost me at "34."

Ha. Thank you for the nifty explanation.

[UrenragK]

You're really going to want some direct monitors, not bluetooth, with bluetooth the latency will almost always be too much, and will vary, whereas professional wireless monitors will have less latency, and are designed for live use