jmelkerson As Peter mentions above, it very much depends on whether using multitrack audio or not.
My band migrated from:
- Backing multitrack backing tracks being triggered and played from a Roland SPD drum trigger pad into Stage Traxx, AND
- That start trigger moving from a local Roland SPD pad strike to the Roland SPD pad triggering a MIDI command to Start/Stop Stage Traxx, AND
- Adopting Wireless MIDI using CME wireless MIDI products to connect the Roland SPD to the iPad running Stage Traxx.
For the start of songs where there was always a count-in going to our IEMs, that extra 100-250ms was never a problem.
Where it got interesting was any song where we needed to either:
- Start the song backing track/click track proper further into the performance, e.g. song with a loose tempo acoustic guitar and vocal intro that then has a tempo change and snaps into the main song (in our case Don't Stop Me Now by Queen), or
- A song we break into 2 parts because we have a underdetermined length audience interaction component in the middle that breaks up the two halves. In this case we use the cross fade feature to transition from Part 1 to Part 2.
In both the above cases, we're trying to bring the band back onto click/backing track in the middle of a performance where tempo may may have drifted AND now our drummer has to allow for a 200ms 'lag'. We've made it work as it nicely worked out in our scenarios that it was close enough to a quarter-note lag that had to be allowed for, so any half-decent drummer should be able to count/feel that.
In my testing of wired MIDI and using the CME Wireless MIDI stuff on the Roland SPD (WIDI Master in my case) to trigger Stage Traxx 3 Start/Stop, there was no neglible difference as the wireless MIDI latency is (on paper) around the 2-4ms which pales in comparison to the 200ms start lag of multitrack songs in ST.
If you are only using Stereo audio files in ST3 where the lag is 20ms, depending on how tight your timing needs to be, you may or may not notice depending on the material you are using, what is happening at the start of your backing tracks, and your own perception of things.