Why Real-Time Matters: Performance Evaluation of Recent Ultra-Low Latency Audio Communication Systems

Latency-optimized audio communication systems for the Internet have mainly been studied in the context of networked music performances (NMP) and high-end video conferencing systems. To date, the research in this field has focused on approaches for compensating the negative effects of network jitter on the audio transmission. The contribution of this paper is threefold: first, the authors summarize the state of the art in the area of ultra-low latency audio communications; second, they provide a quantitative performance analysis of recent implementations; and finally, they discuss the benefits of real-time-capable endpoint implementations. This discussion shows that not only the network jitter has a significant impact on the overall system performance, but also the timing jitter induced by endpoint systems running non-real-time software. This opens up enormous research potential for future work on real-time systems for latency-optimized audio communication.