> Maybe so for developers, but as a user on Windows or MacOS I don’t have to know or care about any of that stuff. Things just work, and work sensibly.
depends on the kind of user you are. If you're looking for the lowest-latency possible (for instance because you play guitar with an effect stack going through your computer) then windows with ASIO or linux with Jack give you a better mileage on the exact same hardware than CoreAudio
You aim for 3ms, 10ms can be described as annoying. 50ms is really bad.
In reality you either move to analog processing when you reach that much delay or design your creative workflow around it (learn not to expect immediate feedback) so you move towards offline processing.
As a guitarist, 8-10ms of processing latency is playable but feels somewhat strange especially if you compare to plugging the guitar right into a tube amp. 2ms is entirely indistinguishable for me.
And, with the "normal" system APIs (except CoreAudio which fares a bit better) it's pretty hard to get below 15ms in my experience, even with beefy computers.
depends on the kind of user you are. If you're looking for the lowest-latency possible (for instance because you play guitar with an effect stack going through your computer) then windows with ASIO or linux with Jack give you a better mileage on the exact same hardware than CoreAudio