Latency · Reference

Latency is the gap between a sound being made and you hearing it. Skiff adds a little; plug-ins and Bluetooth can add a lot more.

01Where it comes from

app ─▶ Skiff device ─▶ engine ─▶ chain ─▶ hardware ─▶ ears
       └──── hop ──────────┘      └ plug-ins ┘ └ buffer, radio ┘

Source	Adds
Skiff's hop	About one hardware buffer
Most EQs and filters	0 ms
AUPeakLimiter	2 ms
AUDynamicsProcessor, AUMultibandCompressor	6 ms
Lookahead and noise removal	Tens of ms
Bluetooth headphones	Often over 150 ms

The time in the status line, as in Active · 2 ms · 48 kHz, is what your plug-ins report together. Switched-off stages don't count; they don't run.

Music and video: nobody hears a few milliseconds, and lip sync holds up to about 20.
Calls: a few milliseconds is nothing next to the network.
Hearing yourself: Monitor adds the mic's latency to the output's. On wired headphones it's fine; on Bluetooth you'll hear an echo of yourself.
Playing an instrument: use your interface's direct monitoring. Skiff is for listening and talking, not tracking.

Use wired headphones instead of Bluetooth. That's the big one.
Switch off stages you don't need.
Run at a higher rate. A buffer is a fixed number of samples, so at 96 kHz it lasts half as long as at 48.