Dynamic latency management, dynamic drift correction, and automatic microphone detection

Latency in real-time electronic communication is dynamically managed. A communication delay arising from a receiving data buffer is measured and a latency adjustment necessary to adjust the size of the communication delay within a predetermined range and an optimal range for a size of the communication delay are determined. Using these parameters, the number of samples for an audio playback data block passing through the receiving data buffer is modified. Temporal drift correction may be provided in a real-time audio communication system by measuring a size of a receiving data buffer and comparing that size to a predetermined nominal data buffer size. An amount of temporal drift is characterized as a number of samples per audio playback data block based on the measured data block data buffer size and nominal data buffer size. A number of samples to be inserted or removed for each audio playback data block to correct the temporal drift may be determined, and the number of samples for each audio playback data block may be modified. Heuristic resampling of the audio playback data block also may be performed. When heuristic resampling is performed, multiple consecutive samples of audio data in an audio buffer may be analyzed, consecutive sample with minimal variation in a parameter of their data may be identified, and the number of samples in the identified consecutive samples may be adjusted. A sample may be removed from or added to the identified consecutive samples. Furthermore, whether a microphone is connected to a real-time audio communication system of a computer may be detected by recording an audio sample through the real-time audio communication system, filtering a DC component is filtered out to the audio data, recognizing a pattern in the auto-correlation coefficients of the filtered audio sample, and determining whether a microphone is properly connected to the real-time audio communication system based on the values of the auto-correlation function coefficients and the predetermined values.