Line-in input delay—using a Beoplay A9 (or any B&O speaker) with a musical instrument

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measuring_cups Posted: Tue, Mar 23 2021 3:03 PM

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I just purchased a Beoplay A9 (4th generation w/ Google assistant) and connected it to my computer via line-in to use it as a speaker for my midi keyboard.

Unfortunately, there is a slight delay (probably ~50ms) that makes it unsuitable for playing an instrument in real-time. If I connect any other speaker to the computer there is no delay, so I know it is the A9 specifically that is causing the issue.

I found another post on the forum about a line-in delay setting in the sound configuration, but it doesn't solve my problem for a few reasons

1. I think this person was talking about much greater delay (they mentioned 1-1.5 second delay for bluetooth) that was impacting audio/video being out of sync
2. When I looked at the line-in settings, there was no delay checkbox for me
3. There is a "Disable delay" checkbox in the optical settings, even though this speaker has no optical input. When I select "Disable delay" here, it displays the message "Delay disabledLine-in delay disabled" exactly like that, with no space. So it looks a little buggy, and I can't tell if it is actually setting the line-in delay from the optical settings page or not. But it does not solve the problem.

Does anyone have any experience using the Beoplay A9 for real-time audio like this? Is there another B&O speaker I could get instead that would not have this problem?

Thanks!

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Carolpa replied on Tue, Mar 23 2021 5:37 PM

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measuring_cups:

even though this speaker has no optical input

it is the same input as the LineIn (if the last version is the 4th generation)

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measuring_cups replied on Tue, Mar 23 2021 7:43 PM

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Oh! Well, that would explain why the setting is in the optical section and seems to apply to both. Changing the setting doesn't seem to make a difference though.

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Stan replied on Tue, Mar 23 2021 10:30 PM

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It might be the lag of the sound processing within the A9.  The more recent B&O active speakers contain DSPs (digital signal processors) to "voice" them - fine tune the audio response to optimize the sound for the drivers, amps and enclosure - this isn't free.  You win better sound.  You lose a bit of latency.  I doubt that playing musical instruments is a use case R&D give much consideration.  Then again, this is all speculation.

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measuring_cups replied on Sat, Mar 27 2021 5:56 PM

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I bought a TOSLINK cable to test the delay with optical and it works great!! I think it is a bug in the app that the delay setting only applies to optical and not line-in.

Thanks