Latency problem with TC-Helicon VoiceWorks?

[KiwiMuso]

Hi, I'm thinking of buying this unit for vocal processing, currently running Powermac G4 3.6 (Silver door model) 1.25 GHz Processor G4 with 1BB L3 cache, RAM: 768. Running: MAC OS X 10.4.3. Also 002 Rack with ProTools version: 7. I understand there are no problems in realtime, but when I run the VoiceWorks as an external effect during subsequent mixing/editing, is it true that I will have a "variable latency" (delay) problem?
Thanks

[daeron80]

Connecting S/PDIF, I can't say for sure. Don't know why it would be variable, at least not varying during playback. The latency of the 002 itself should depend strictly on your hardware buffer setting. For analog i/o, I've made an html chart showing delays in samples for each buffer setting at each sample rate:
http://www.elvenminstrel.com/recordi...tencychart.htm

My understanding is that latencies through digital connections are shorter, but I don't know exactly how much shorter. Probably by the D/A and A/D conversion times, which appear to be 87 or 88 samples. Not sure if that is one way or both ways.

The TC unit itself will obviously take a short amount of time to do its digital thing, too, so total roundtrip latency may vary with how much you're demanding of it at any given time. More harmony voices probably mean longer processing times, and thus more latency from the TC itself. That has been true of every digital harmonizer I've ever used.

[KiwiMuso]

Thanks for the useful info. I think I might go ahead and buy this unit - my vocals are the weak link at the moment, and this seems to have a number of features which will hopefully make them tolerable. To my family, at least!