What's the point in software monitoring?

[Skaven83]

Does this mean that I can monitor plugineffects in realtime? I was just wondering because when I switched on the software monitoring I got delay...

[macouno]

ehm not really... everybody would want it to work smoothly but plugin effects just take too much out of the processor.

This delay is rather unavoidable... You can get less by playing around with your buffer size, but when the delay is acceptable, the buffer is so small that the sound quality is really suffering.

Problem is that it would probably be solved with much faster processing, but I'm sure that plugins would be much more demanding by then also.

[Skaven83]

ok, but what is software monitoring used for then?

[Craftiste]

It means just what it says - when it's on you are listening to what you are recording through Logic NOT through your hardware - hence the delay (otherwise known as latency). By the sounds of things you don't need it.