During the past few years high refresh rate monitors and the ability to run games at very high frame rates have lead to a dramatic reduction of the visible “button to pixel” delay.
This is without a doubt a great improvement for competitive players as the game then responds much quicker to your input and what you see is more in sync with the game state.
A side effect of this improvement is that the disparity between the visible “button to pixel” delay and the “button to audio” delay has increased a lot.
In other words what you see and what you hear is not in sync.
Delay Chart 360FPS https:// i.imgur. com/GDsxTdN.jpg
The above is from my latest video and shows the lowest results I could measure.
If you use an external DAC, wireless headset, VoiceMeeter, etc. chances are that the disparity is even bigger and exceeds 200ms.
Delay Chart 60FPS - Sound Cards https:// i.imgur. com/1pMPi7o.jpg
CS:Go allows the player to change the size of the sound buffer which leads to less audio delay
snd_mixahead https:// i.imgur. com/Qhm4nPg.jpg
It would be nice if we could get a similar option in Overwatch and for Overwatch 2 it would be great if the developers could consider “WASAPI exclusive” and “WASAPI shared” support so that not only competitive players can take better use of the audio cues the game provides but that the delay of sounds trigger by players (gunfire, etc.) is in sync with what they see on their monitor.
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Its to do with the displays processing unit. I have a similar issue when streaming movies/shows from any stream service on my PS3 & PS4. ITs not the consoles themselves, but rather the processor on the TV’s that have the issue. My LG 4K TV is perfectly fine when playing video games on it, but when I watch netflix or prime video, there is a 0.2-0.5 sec delay in the video. I get the audio first and the video is out of sync following behind.
On PC I have no issues with Streaming Video or Gaming. Just picked up an ASUS 165Hz 1440P 31.5in monitor and its nothing but gorgeous. Im also using a real Audio Card (ASUS Xonar D2 7.1) so that helps greatly.
I get the audio first and the video is out of sync following behind
That is the complete opposite of what I am talking about. 
With a high refresh rate monitor you get the Button To Pixel delay down to 20ms, while the audio delay does not get lower than 134ms (your “real” Audio card is likely to will cause even more delay - see the video I linked to).
That (fixed) audio delay value was most likely put in place so that even at 60Hz+v-sync the audio does not get ahead of the video as at 60Hz+v-sync the Button2Pixel delay is around 110ms (except if you play on a TV which with all its post processing can easily push the Button2Pixel delay past 190ms, at which point the audio is ahead by 60+ms - that is the issue you described).
If you can, please watch the video I linked to which explains it in great detail.
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What is the state of the art on min audio delay?
Can’t they preempt audio cues just like they do frames i.e interp/extrap. I get how extra audio hw (line quality) will worsen the delay. Not sure what typical gamer ‘threshold of discernability’ is for audio cues, either
What is the state of the art on min audio delay?
In games?
The lowest I have seen is in CS:Go when you reduce the sound buffer as much as your system can handle by using the snd_mixahead command in the console.
But in general the audio drivers/api’s “ASIO” and “WASAPI exclusive” allow applications to achieve the lowest audio delays.
These drivers are used by musicians and in music/audio production - I am not aware of any game that allows you to select ASIO/WASAPI instead of MME/WDM.
That said, if your system has high Button 2 Pixel delay, using ASIO/WASAPI would cause that the audio is ahead of the video/image. Reducing audio delay is for systems with very low Button 2 Pixel delay (high refresh rate, high frame rate, no v-sync)
Studies showed that humans will notice that something is off when video and audio differ by more than 45ms.
https:// en. wikipedia . org/wiki/Audio-to-video_synchronization#cite_note-BT1359-1
Please see the video I linked to for more detail on all of that. 
It’s not as noticeable because your audio reaction time is faster than your visual. But it really is annoying to get earth shattered while you hear “hammer…”
