Play WITHOUT ANY latency

[Chris]

By bypassing the software modelling (amps, pedals) in rocksmith, It's possible to play without latency at all (and without really means without ANY latency). I've been playing for a while like this, and it works REALLY great and just adds so much more fun to the game.

What you have to do is this:

Buy a Line 6 pod / Behringer V-Amp or other modelling amp ;)
Plug guitar in modelling amp
Connect the dry and wet channels to a mixing panel
Connect the analog audio output of the computer / xbox to the mixing panel
Plug the rocksmith cable into one of the AUX outputs of the mixing panel
Turn the dry output of the V-Amp / Line 6 to the aux output and turn the volume down
Turn the 'guitar volume' in the rocksmith settings menu all the way to 0
Turn the 'screen delay' in the settings menu all the way to 0
Mix the computer/xbox + wet channels to your speakers / headphones

Et voila, no latency at all by bypassing the amp simulation in rocksmith. And you can generate much better sounding guitar amps / effects with a Line6 anyway....

[MajeureX]

Nice idea. I wonder you can achieve something similar using a signal splitter.

[Necro]

Only about 500€ investment :D

[Johnnykey]

I already knew it was possible to play without ANY delay, as long as you get into a +100€ investment. Tell me something I don't know. Something like how to further reduce it for free >>

[LieutenantClone]

Yeah, that sounds like way too much work. One of the big things I like about this game is how convenient the usb cable makes it, I don't even have to drag my amp over to the computer.

And a signal splitter sounds like a much easier/cheaper way to do the same thing.

[LieutenantClone]

Also... I don't get any lag from the game, at least nothing noticeable to the human ear. My computer is pretty powerful though, and I tweaked all the settings to reduce the latency (Can't remember but there is one setting that says if you lower it too much the audio might get choppy... but my computer is powerful enough that I can set that to 0 without any issues).

[Gecko]

I use a standard Aux cable plugged into my PC, play with a crack, and I get 0 latency. People who spend $30 on a cable get latency :s

[LieutenantClone]

Publicado originalmente por G3ck0:

I use a standard Aux cable plugged into my PC, play with a crack, and I get 0 latency. People who spend $30 on a cable get latency :s

Its not the cable that causes latency. It's peoples hardware. If you have a low end PC, you are going to get more latency than a high end one, regardless of which interface you use.

[Chris]

Publicado originalmente por LieutenantClone:

Publicado originalmente por G3ck0:

I use a standard Aux cable plugged into my PC, play with a crack, and I get 0 latency. People who spend $30 on a cable get latency :s

Its not the cable that causes latency. It's peoples hardware. If you have a low end PC, you are going to get more latency than a high end one, regardless of which interface you use.

That's not entirely true. There is some minimum latency regardless of how fast your hardware is, just because of the way how Windows works, the USB protocol, PCI-e, soundcards and their corresponding digital buffers have been implemented. With my PC and rocksmith just with the USB cable it's deffinetely play-able (I have a high end PC), but it's certainly a different 'feel' playing with hardware modelling.

With a simple signal splitter you're not gonna get the same effect, since you will need some modelling / amp / speaker sim to get a decent guitar sound, and you will need some mixer to mix your modelled guitar sound with the rocksmith sound (/background music).

A simple Behringer V-Amp and a mixer are not that expensive (possibly around €100 2nd handed) and are definitely worth the investment (also, because you can use it outside rocksmith playing 'real' guitar).

Is there actually someone here who has tried something like this, and just can confirm how awesome this is...

[MajeureX]

Publicado originalmente por Chris:

With a simple signal splitter you're not gonna get the same effect, since you will need some modelling / amp / speaker sim to get a decent guitar sound, and you will need some mixer to mix your modelled guitar sound with the rocksmith sound (/background music).

Of course - you would need an guitar amplifier of some kind to connect one of the split signals to, and the other signal to Rocksmith cable; this was implied.

[Kring]

Am I missing something - this has nothing to do with latency, you are just listening to the direct Guitar sound before it gets to the computer... all the latency is still there from your Guitar to rocksmith... I don't think this addresses anything having to do with latency between the guitar and the game.

[MajeureX]

It would address latency in terms of striking the guitar and hearing the sound through speakers a fraction of a second later, because you aren't using the Rocksmith's effects modelling. It won't affect display lag or note registration. Fortunately, this can be compenstated for by the 'DIsplay Lag Correction' setting.

[Viktor Sr.]

Publicado originalmente por G3ck0:

I use a standard Aux cable plugged into my PC, play with a crack, and I get 0 latency. People who spend $30 on a cable get latency :s

What do you mean "standard Aux cable plugged into my PC"? Plugged into what port/jack/input on your PC?

I didn't think Rocksmith worked without the RealTone USB cable.

[MajeureX]

There's a cracked version of Rocksmith floating about that let's you use standard audio inputs with Rocksmith. But officially, you can only use the RealTone cable.

[fLIPsWITcH]

Publicado originalmente por Doomy:

Nice idea. I wonder you can achieve something similar using a signal splitter.

I tried that but got lots of digi-noise in my Fender Twin, works though

[Indrek]

Publicado originalmente por LieutenantClone:

Its not the cable that causes latency. It's peoples hardware. If you have a low end PC, you are going to get more latency than a high end one, regardless of which interface you use.

It's the combination of the cable and its drivers, as well as other hardware, that causes latency.

Here's two examples from my personal experience:

1. Desktop with Core i7-2600K, HD 6850 and 8 GB of RAM, using the Real Tone cable. In Rocksmith.ini, LatencyBuffer=1 and MaxOutputBufferSize=160. That's the lowest I can get. Total latency is ~10 ms, which is definitely noticeable, though not enough to throw me off when playing songs. It's much more annoying in Amp mode, probably because there's nothing to drown out the guitar's acousting sound, so I get that double-picking effect.

2. Old HP laptop with a single-core AMD Turion, integrated ATI graphics and 1 GB of RAM, using a Mackie Onyx Satellite audio interface (over Firewire) with proper ASIO drivers, into an amp sim (Amplitube, Guitar Rig etc.). Latency 4-5 ms and completely unnoticeable, and that's with 24-bit sample size. Obviously can't run too many amp sim instances at the same time, but that's why you can freeze tracks in DAW programs.

So no, older or low-end hardware does not inherently cause lower latency, and a modern high-end setup is not guaranteed to be trouble-free. The problem is that a) Ubisoft have chosen the cheapest preamp+ADC combo possible for the cable; b) they (or the cable's ODM) don't provide proper ASIO drivers for it*; and c) most people's computers aren't properly set up for real-time audio, with devices hogging PCI bandwidth, badly written drivers causing spikes in DPC latency (which in turn causes audio dropouts and forces people to increase their audio latency settings), and so on.

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* Okay, to be fair, most people probably don't have ASIO-compatible audio hardware for playback from Rocksmith, plus getting the game to use more than one ASIO device (the Real Tone cable for input and an audio interface for output) might end up not being feasible. All the more reason for Ubisoft to let people use their existing audio interfaces (for those that have them) for both input and output, though.