Millisecond Forums

Fiddly Timing Question

https://forums.millisecond.com/Topic2054.aspx

By benjy - 10/5/2008

Hi All,
    I have a(nother) timing question.  The Inquisit help files make it quite clear that visual sitmulus presentation times are rounded to the nearest integer frame/retrace (which is system dependent), or presented in the specified frame if the /frames attibute is used.  In fact I have done some informal testing with a photometer and a CRO measuring interstimulus intervals and the like for a masked priming script and found the timing to be absolutely spot on when using /frames.  What I have not been able to determine is what happens with
a) soundfiles, and
b) intertrial pauses.

Given that system resolution is considerably finer than screen resolution, how does Inquisit handle the timing of soundfiles?  Are their start times locked to the screen refreshes or can they start playing at arbitrary times with millisecond accuracy?

Presumably, since trials are executed in terms of their frame contents, the start time of a trial is rounded to the nearest frame, so writing /stimulustime = [0 = Something]   will always yield the exact same timing as /frames = [0 = Something]?
Is this the case or are intertrial times, pauses etc asynchronous with respect to the screen refresh and the frame/stimulustimes shifted or rounded to fit?


Any clarification is greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
     Ben.