The greatest problem when moving to a computer from analogue recording devices is that of latency.

Latency is the inevitable delay between the computer receiving audio information and then playing it back. This problem is greatest when trying to record additional tracks to a song.

The length of delay varies greatly between computers and the software and device drivers installed on them. DPC Latency Checker is a tool for checking how bad the latency of a computer is, and can then be used for troubleshooting.

No installation is required, simply double-click on the file once it has downloaded onto your computer. The interface is equally simple. There is a single graph that shows the current latency of the computer as checked every second. Both the current latency and the highest recorded value are also shown. The graph bars are colour coded to give some idea of how bad the latency is.

The checker can be left running while changes are made to the computer to see if they improve the situation.