[pulseaudio-discuss] alsa sink latency - how to account for startup delay

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Tue, 2016-03-22 at 10:11 +0100, Georg Chini wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> when a sink is started, there is some delay before the first sample is 
> really played.
> This delay is a constant part of the sink latency that will be always 
> present, so the
> minimum sink latency cannot go below that start delay.
> Would it be acceptable to adjust the latency range for the device after 
> each unsuspend
> to reflect that?
> USB devices (those I have access to) for example have a startup delay in 
> the range of
> 10ms, but have a latency range that starts at 0.5ms which does not make 
> a lot of sense
> in my opinion.

I don't understand why the startup delay would limit the minimum
latency once the stream is flowing. Imagine a sound card that is
powered by a nuclear power plant. I don't know how long it takes to
start a nuclear power plant, but let's say it takes a couple of days.
Now the sound card startup delay is a couple of days, but there's no
reason that the audio latency has to be a couple of days once the power
plant is running. Where would all that audio be buffered anyway?

-- 
Tanu