Wheresthedug - I am impressed! 20mS of latency is 40 ticks at 125bpm. Or to put this in real world terms, that's a perceptible snare flam or like someone clapping slightly out of time.
I'm not saying that 20ms of latency is totally unnoticeable simply that it doesn't put me off enough to stop me playing in time.
The Yamaha article seems to be referring specifically to live sound and singers with IEM where they can feel and hear the sound in their head disconnected from the IEM. They are referring to the comb filtering effect rather than the timing itself. The same article also suggested that in a studio environment that up to 20ms should be unnoticeable to most players.
Focusrite say on their Q&A section that anything up to 11ms should make no practical difference to most people.
Remember that even an acoustic piano has latency >5ms because of a) the hammer action and b) our position relative to the sound source which is at least 2ms with an upright and probably much greater on a grand piano.
Obviously, you are very sensitive to latency and, if it bothers you then it bothers you. I have not sat next to you in the room and experienced your personal perception first hand but I suspect there is more at play here than 3ms of latency. I think there might be a healthy dose of placebo effect involved. This is something we are all affected by and is in no way intended as a slight on you personally.
I will have some fun experimenting with the drum examples tonight but back in my day putting the snare late used to be called feel . Some of my favourite drummers like Bernard Purdie were famous for laying so far back on the beat that they almost fell over
If you genuinely feel the Pod sounded better and had less latency issues you might be better served by its successors such as the Helix. I tried the Helix and KPA side by side for a full afternoon and they were beothe excellent. The Kemper sounded and felt more like my preference for real amps and the workflow was much better suited to my needs but they were both fantastic and it really was a matter of personal taste rather than better or worse.
Burkhard ckemper can you guys through any light on the reason why the KPA supposedly has 10 times the latency of the humble Pod 2.0?