How is it possible to measure latency of a DAC?

[gustavjung]

Hi!

I need this for music production. I know there are tools like Centrance Latency Test Utility and Oblique Audio - RTL Utility which measure round trip latency of audio interfaces, but they use their inputs.
In DAC only there are no inputs but if you consider using them in music production when inputs are not needed then latency is still important for playback of VST instruments in DAW. However I heard an opinion that in this case the smaller latency is worse for project playback. Not sure.
So I am just curious is it possible to measure latency of DAC only devices or may be measuring what buffer is used in DAC is even more important?

 

[somebodyelse]

The easiest thing would be to check the round trip latency with your DAC playing into the input of another interface and compare with the round trip for the other interface alone. That way you'll see the difference in the latencies of the two DAC stages.

 

[gustavjung]

@somebodyelse thanks, can you recommend a software where I can do that with 2 devices. The above-mentioned utilities allow to test 1 device only as input and output.

 

[somebodyelse]

You should be able to do it with whatever DAW software you're using by playing a track through whichever DAC and looping back through an input to record another track. Zoom in and you should see the delay between the tracks - this is your loopback latency. I'm assuming your software can use multiple devices.