sox_ng real-time processing update

Years ago, I wrote a Python program I called Audir (Audio Director). It remains at
https://www.dlee.org/audir/ and can use SoX as a real-time sound relay among devices, to/from files, etc. My
comments below all apply to using SoX or sox_ng to relay sound between sound devices and/or Virtual Audio
Cable devices on a Windows 11 Professional, eight-core Dell laptop running on power.

Until today, I've used SoX 14.4.1 for its speed. Today, I am starting to use sox_ng 14.6.0 instead. These
are findings in case useful:

In the older SoX, --buffer 1024 was sufficient for most operations on my machine, and I could even get away
with --buffer 768 sometimes. On sox_ng, I need --buffer 3000 at a mimimum, and --buffer 4000 if I use
speexdsp - which, I might add, is a rather fun thing to do to my default audio output path when I bounce
among chat programs, meetings, etc.! I don't know how these numbers translate to delays in ms, nor whether
the mappings of --buffer <size> to ms are the same between the SoX and sox_ng versions.

I appreciate the static sox_ng Windows build for its single-file simplicity. I also appreciate the bundling
of ffmpeg.exe for those who need it. I did not see wget.exe in the Zip but the docs made it seem like it was
supposed to be there? The SoX 14.4.1 Zip, years ago, included wget.exe but not ffmpeg.exe, included several
(required) DLL files, and did not support as many formats out of the box as the sox_ng static build does -
e.g., flac. This update, I also very much appreciate.

I lack the know-how to craft a WSAPI driver for sox_ng; but if that ever happens, and especially if sox_ng
becomes capable of enumerating found in/out devices (with or without the -V3 trick used on MacOS), I'll be,
as they say, all ears!

Thanks very much to those who are maintaining and enhancing sox_ng.

-- 
Doug Lee                 [email protected]                http://www.dlee.org
"No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your
right to grow." --Alice Walker