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Piano is around 20 - 30 ms. Flute/clar are more like 30 - 60 ms. Yes, bass instruments are even longer, lower register on a double bass can easily be 200+ ms. That's why quantizing MIDI data for orchestral instruments causes issues. The various instruments have latencies that are all over the place. And people can deal with it just fine.

Also, ever seen someone walk around stage playing an electric guitar? Sound travels at about 1 ft per ms, so if you move 10 feet from your amp, you just added 10 ms of latency. Go to one of those giant stadium setups and it's easily 30+ ft from the guitarist/keyboardist to the amps. That's at least 30 ms of latency. And they do just fine, too.

Latency used to be a problem WAY back in the day when digitial audio was brand new. Latencies were huge and people rightfully worried about it. It's not an issue any longer but people forgot to stop caring!

Here's another way to think about it: at 120 BPM a 1/128 note has a duration of ~15 ms. Have you ever seen a 1/128 rest at any tempo, let alone one as quick as 120 BPM? No, because people can't sense time scales that short.
I generally agree with you. But, when playing a piano, the initiation of hand motion to resulting sound is much longer when you are playing lightly vs. pounding the keys. That's all part of learning to play a real instrument; you calibrate yourself to this variance. The problem arises for people when the sound delay doesn't match what they're use to for a given controller. The delay in my computer system is about 50.ms from MIDI keyboard in to sound output. This is about as much delay as I can stand because harder playing doesn't tighten up the delay the way it does on a real piano. So, I do think it's a good idea to reduce delay as much as possible, but it doesn't come for free.
 
Piano is around 20 - 30 ms. Flute/clar are more like 30 - 60 ms. Yes, bass instruments are even longer, lower register on a double bass can easily be 200+ ms. That's why quantizing MIDI data for orchestral instruments causes issues. The various instruments have latencies that are all over the place. And people can deal with it just fine.

Also, ever seen someone walk around stage playing an electric guitar? Sound travels at about 1 ft per ms, so if you move 10 feet from your amp, you just added 10 ms of latency. Go to one of those giant stadium setups and it's easily 30+ ft from the guitarist/keyboardist to the amps. That's at least 30 ms of latency. And they do just fine, too.

Latency used to be a problem WAY back in the day when digitial audio was brand new. Latencies were huge and people rightfully worried about it. It's not an issue any longer but people forgot to stop caring!

Here's another way to think about it: at 120 BPM a 1/128 note has a duration of ~15 ms. Have you ever seen a 1/128 rest at any tempo, let alone one as quick as 120 BPM? No, because people can't sense time scales that short.

rgames
You always blow me away with your knowledge. Thanks Mr. Encylopaedia!
 
the initiation of hand motion to resulting sound is much longer when you are playing lightly vs. pounding the keys.
Very true. In theory a weighted hammer action controller (mostly) accounts for that but it's never quite exactly the same.

50 ms is on the long side of acceptable for me as well. I find that 100 ms is still workable but annoying. But even my laptop can do a full orchestral mockup now with < 50 ms, so it's not really an issue these days.

rgames
 
But even my laptop can do a full orchestral mockup now with < 50 ms, so it's not really an issue these days.
I don't know how new your laptop is, but all I use are laptops, used laptops; a 2012 MacBook Pro and a 2015 HP zBook. You can get quite a lot of horsepower for very little money. They certainly do everything I need. But, I may add a third, as things get a bit tight at times.
 
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