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Topic: Lockdown, Jamming online with friends |
Alan Murphy
From:
N Ireland
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Posted 28 Apr 2020 11:07 am |
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Not sure if this is the best place to post, as this applies to most of us (BoB: Feel free to move this)
In this lockdown climate we are all missing band practise and live gigs, it would be wonderful to jam with band members on the internet, but is it possible?
Our Terminology:
The term half duplex means only one person can play at the one time, and full duplex allow both to play together.
Latency we assume is the round trip delay for a signal to reach your friend and for their sound to get back to you.
Skype is half duplex - so thats not an option
Google duo is full duplex - but the latency is 1 second
Facetime is half duplex
Zoom - I think is half duplex - but has security issues
The Ping time on my router to a test server (and back) is only 25mS but this is nothing compared to the round trip latency of the chat services of 1000mS. My speed is 65Mbps download and 20Mbps upload so that is not a problem.
I notice some paid services promise latency better than half a second but they are expensive and we want free, with a latency of about 300mS or better.
We only need low latency audio, the video feed could run on a different link or not at all, its not so important.
I am pretty sure most of the time is spent doing encryption, sometimes on the browser, probably much faster to not encrypt audio at all. The latency is no better when video is even switched off !
Are there any free options which might work, otherwise it is going to be a long winter!
Alan.. |
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Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
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Posted 28 Apr 2020 11:36 am
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| The Stones apparently did their One World At Home performance live on Zoom. Maybe the network production team had millions of dollars worth of synchronizing equipment, or maybe there is a way to use the over-the-counter version of the Zoom conference app to accomplish what they did, who knows. Something tells me teams of geeks around the world are working overtime to make this kind of thing more commonplace and affordable. |
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Alan Murphy
From:
N Ireland
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Posted 28 Apr 2020 11:45 am
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Hi Fred,
That's interesting, I have not tried Zoom, I just see on the internet it talks about echo cancellation etc, which sounds like half duplex, but I will try it, and suffer the security issues !
As a full time job I write this sort of code, and am tempted to throw something together to see what the performance would be like. It would be so good if the full band could join in, nearly better than the real thing as i would save an hour travelling and setting up / down four times !
I'm away to try zoom, I will report back later
Alan.. |
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Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
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Posted 28 Apr 2020 7:03 pm
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| Alan, I am very interested in the results of your experiment. I had an experience with Zoom recently that I would qualify as both amazing for what it was and yet woefully inadequate for doing something like what the Stones did. So I am curious as to what the magic potion is. |
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Alan Murphy
From:
N Ireland
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Posted 5 May 2020 5:13 pm
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Hi Fred, Great news, here is the solution to our problem. Zoom, Duo and Skype have so much lag they are all unusable, but there are specialist programs which work very well. I have tried Jamkazan and Jamulus, there is also Jammr which I didnt try.
Jamkazan works by sending everyones feed to a central server very fast using udp protocol and the server sends back a synchronised signal to everyones headphones, the latency is so small, typically 50mS that there is no sense of picking and hearing the sound with a delay.
You can create your own private session with your band members or friend or join one of the public sessions, there are many country bands many of them of them wanting steel players.
A voice chat and video feed is also possible and you can record as you play if you wish. You need to plug your pc into ethernet, not wifi and ideally have an audio interface with a second channel as a chat mic, and optional webcam. Apparently 200k broadband works for audio only but 3Mbps minimum in each direction would be definitely ok.
Quality is excellent with few dropouts if you set up correctly. You can play with a guitarist in Germany and keyboards in France !
Best of all it is totally free if you don't want to buy jamtracks. Have fun, we will jam online soon. Alan.. |
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Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
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Posted 5 May 2020 7:39 pm
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Thanks Alan. That is great news.
What are you using for interface? Is it necessary, or advisable at least, to connect the interface to the computer via USB? |
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