Definition
Latency is the time delay between when an audio signal is sent and when it's actually heard. It's measured in milliseconds (ms), and in a studio context, even small amounts of it can affect the way you work, particularly when recording live instruments or vocals through a DAW.
Latency and Your Kali Monitors
Kali monitors include onboard Digital Signal Processing (DSP) — the engine responsible for each speaker's EQ voicing, crossover(s), limiters, and protection circuitry. The LP and IN-Series DSP runs at 48kHz / 24-bit, which means your audio signal is converted from analog to digital, processed, and converted back to analog before it reaches your ears.
Kali monitors introduce less than 3ms of latency from input to output. To put that in perspective, sound travels approximately one meter per 3ms through air, meaning the DSP latency is roughly equivalent to sitting about one meter further from your speakers. At a normal listening position, it's effectively imperceptible.
Does It Matter in Practice?
For mixing, mastering, and general playback - not at all. And 3ms is well below the threshold of audible perception in a monitoring context.
Pro tip: If you're recording a live performance or tracking vocals and things feel sluggish or "swimmy," try bypassing non-essential plugins on your monitoring chain during the take. Heavy processors like reverbs and multi-band compressors can stack up latency. Most DAWs have a low-latency monitoring mode for this reason! Save the heavy processing for mixdown, where latency stops being a real-time problem altogether.
Latency Concerns
If latency is a concern in your setup, it's worth knowing that your monitors are very unlikely to be the culprit. The far more common sources of meaningful latency are your audio interface's buffer size, your DAW's processing overhead, and your USB or audio drivers. These variables can add far more latency than any active monitor.