The short delay between making a sound and hearing it back through your system.
Latency is the small delay between an audio signal entering your system and coming back out — for example, the gap between striking a key on a MIDI keyboard and hearing the note from your speakers. It is caused by the time the computer takes to process audio, governed largely by the 'buffer size' setting in your DAW and audio interface. High latency makes recording and performing in time feel impossible, like a laggy echo; low latency feels immediate but demands more from your computer. A good audio interface with efficient drivers keeps latency low enough to record comfortably, which is one of the main reasons it outperforms a computer's built-in audio.
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