Software effect processor

The software effect processor is a computer program which is able to modify the sound coming from a source of sound in real-time.

Principle of operation

The audio signal from the input is transformed to the digital (a stream of numbers) in audio hardware and passed to a piece of computer memory, called buffers. Then it is modified according to a specific algorithm, which creates the desired effect. After this operation, the signal is transformed from digital to analog and sent to the output.

Latency

Latency is the main issue of real-time audio processing. It represents delay between reception of the input signal and its transmitting to the output. The larger the buffer is, the more time it takes to fill it by digital audio data. Large buffers increase the time required for processing audio in computer, this delay is usually called latency. You can adjust the buffer size and set the latency in Preferences of inTone or other applications. Every system has certain limitations - too small buffers involving negligible latencies cannot be smoothly processed by computer, so the reasonable size starts at about 32 samples. The processor load does not affect latency directly (it means, once you set certain buffer size, the latency is constant), but with very high processor loads the processing starts dropping out. Increasing buffer size or quitting other application helps to keep playback smooth.