Quick Answer
Open the Audio Latency Test - it measures the round-trip delay between triggering a sound and your system actually reporting/processing it, giving you a millisecond figure you can compare against your headset, connection type, and use case.
Why Audio Latency Matters More for Some Tasks Than Others
A small amount of audio latency is completely unnoticeable for casual listening or watching a video, since the audio and video are already synced together in the file. It becomes noticeable and disruptive in situations where you need audio to line up precisely with something happening in real time: rhythm games, competitive gaming (where hearing footsteps a beat late is a real disadvantage), music production and monitoring while recording, or video calls where lag makes conversation feel awkward and people talk over each other.
Step-by-Step: Running the Test
- Open the Audio Latency Test and follow the on-screen prompt to start the measurement.
- Run the test a few times in a row rather than relying on a single reading, since latency can vary slightly between runs depending on background system load.
- Test with your different audio setups separately - wired headphones, Bluetooth headphones, and speakers can all show meaningfully different latency, so it's worth measuring each one you actually use.
- If you use Bluetooth, note which audio codec your headphones are using if your OS shows it (SBC, AAC, or aptX Low Latency, for example), since this has a bigger effect on Bluetooth latency than almost anything else.
- For a broader picture of your overall reaction and response chain, pair this with the Reaction Time Test, useful context if you're troubleshooting a feeling of general input lag rather than audio specifically.
What "Good Enough" Latency Looks Like for Different Tasks
The acceptable threshold really does depend on what you're doing, so it's worth thinking in terms of your actual use case rather than chasing the lowest possible number for its own sake. Casual gaming and general media consumption tolerate quite a bit of latency without anyone noticing. Competitive gaming, especially fast shooters where audio cues matter for positioning, benefits from staying on the lower end of what your setup can achieve. Music production and any form of live monitoring while recording are the most latency-sensitive tasks of all, where even latency that would be completely fine for gaming can throw off timing enough to be genuinely disruptive.
How to Interpret the Results
- Low latency, roughly under 50ms - generally imperceptible for most people in most tasks, including competitive gaming for the majority of players.
- Moderate latency, roughly 50-150ms - noticeable in latency-sensitive tasks like rhythm games or live monitoring while recording, though often still fine for general gaming and calls.
- High latency, above 150-200ms - noticeable in almost any real-time context, including normal conversation over a call; worth investigating the cause rather than living with it.
Why Bluetooth Almost Always Adds More Latency Than Wired
Bluetooth audio has to encode, transmit wirelessly, and decode the audio signal, and each of those steps adds a small amount of delay that a wired connection simply doesn't have. The specific codec matters a lot here: standard SBC (the most universally supported Bluetooth codec) tends to have the highest latency, AAC is moderately better on supported devices, and codecs specifically designed for low latency (like aptX Low Latency or Google's low-latency codec used in some gaming-focused Bluetooth setups) can get close to wired performance. If Bluetooth latency is a real problem for your use case, checking whether your headphones and device both support a low-latency codec - and that it's actually being used, not just supported - is often more effective than troubleshooting individual settings.
Common Causes and Fixes
Beyond the wired-vs-Bluetooth codec difference, high latency can also come from your audio driver buffer size settings, which trade off latency against stability; a smaller buffer reduces latency but increases the risk of crackling if your system can't keep up. Background CPU load from other applications can also introduce audio latency spikes, particularly on lower-powered machines. For music production or any task where latency genuinely matters, a dedicated audio interface with ASIO drivers (on Windows) typically offers noticeably lower and more consistent latency than a generic onboard audio chip.
FAQ
Is some audio latency always present, even on the best setups?
Yes, there's always some processing delay in any digital audio chain - the goal is getting it low enough that
it's not perceptible for your specific use case, not eliminating it entirely.
Why does my latency vary between test runs?
Background system load, other apps competing for audio resources, and even browser tab activity can cause
small variations between runs; running the test a few times gives a more representative picture than one run.
Does a wired USB headset have zero latency?
Not zero, but generally much lower and more consistent than Bluetooth, since it skips the wireless encoding and
transmission steps entirely.
Can high latency be fixed just by buying better headphones?
Sometimes, if the current headphones use an especially high-latency Bluetooth codec, but the fix is often more
about the connection type and codec than the headphone's audio quality itself.
Does the length of my headphone cable affect wired latency?
No - electrical signal travels effectively instantly over a cable at any reasonable length; cable length has
no meaningful effect on latency the way wireless transmission does.