title: Low latency and plughw:* vs hw:* devices
body: <p>I'm having fun tinkering around ALSA and I would like to achieve a very low latency stream from capture to playback device (btw, I cannot find some example code to read about this, do you know any? I find a lot of only-capture / only-playback code).</p>
  
  <p>My question is if, latency wise, I should use the <code>hw:*</code> devices and handle by myself the limitations they have or the convience provided by the <code>plughw:*</code> devices is enough good that I should prefer the latter.</p>
  
  <p>For example: I want move the audio stream inside my application in float32 sample format, and the <code>plughw:*</code> device takes care of the convertion of float32 to/from the format required by the audio card hardware. If use the <code>hw:*</code> device and I do by myself this convertion (among other things I'm now required to handle) can I achieve a better latency? Or I shouldn't bother?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance for your wisdom.</p>