device a decoding portion 704 by the time device a has played out data to the point corresponding to time t b device b will have received and decoded portion 706 for a further illustration consider the shaded overlapping sections of data portions 704 and 705 which overlap from time t the latency associated with the shaded portion of 704 is equal to the latency associated with the shaded portion of 705 is equal to t lb u03b4t t eb t tb t db t s u2212 u03b4t t s t eb t tb t db the u03b4t term arises from having to sample the overlapping section of portion 705 for a duration of time u03b4t the term t s u2212 u03b4t arises because the receiving device has to play out the decoded data corresponding to portion 705 for a time t s u2212 u03b4t before it can play out the data corresponding to time t of portion 705 in an ideal implementation the sampling time offset u03b4t can be chosen such that the latency associated with each data stream is equal to the maximum of the individual latencies that would occur if each receiver device were the only device the value.