Some discussion of other options:
[quote=“willsie01”]…then a short while ago I heard about the JackTrip Virtual Studio and got very excited:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/bFjNCvWMtrnJDTyq9
There are YT vids of people jamming using this kit.
$150 on Amazon + $8.35 shipping to U.K. Claimed import duty $0.
Also available as a kit.
This unit is uses a Raspberry Pi.
Also can be used to implement Jamulus as well as the JackTrip software, which is also an open source project.
If you’re interested in learning about it I’d start here:
https://www.jacktrip.org/index.html
I did say in my last post that I didn’t feel musically competent to invite others to collaborate but…I’m very keen to explore this if there is anyone who could put up with my limitations.[/quote]
[quote=“Majik”] Yes, I’m familiar with Jacktrip. I messed around with it once across my own network.
It does it in a good way to minimise latency, using peer-to-peer. Any time you have a central server you introduce additional latency as you have to from each person to the server and back again.
However, a central server also provides something that is tricky with peer-to-peer: latency compensation. The trouble with peer-to-peer is that each the latency between peers can be different. For instance, We could have 10ms between me and you, but it might be 30ms between me and Toby, and 40ms between you and Toby.
To a degree this doesn’t matter if the latencies are low, but I’m not sure how this works in practice. I also doubt the overall latency between Toby in France and us in the UK would be significantly lower than it could be with Jamulus.
I also think $150 plus shipping is a lot to spend on something that’s quite speculative.
I actually invested in the JamKazam JamBlaster kickstarter a few years ago. I think that was around $200. This was a similar unit to the JackTrip Virtual Studio. I received the hardware, but actually finding and arranging jams with people online was difficult and they eventually seemed to sink into obscurity and the hardware was abandoned.
Because of this, I’m a bit sceptical about investing in something like this.
And therein lies the rub: I actually think the hard part of this even if you solve the technical implementation side, is arranging productive jamming sessions with other people. I take my hat off to Rossco for the OM stuff, but I think something similar for jamming would be harder to organise and maintain.
I’m also using my experience of bell ringing here which, because of COVID, has largely gone online using tools like Ringing Room. Here the technical barriers are much lower and the tools are excellent, and most of the groups already existed in the real-world and have been meeting on a weekly basis for years. Despite this, many of these groups, including the one I am in, have stopped meeting online.
Quote
I did say in my last post that I didn’t feel musically competent to invite others to collaborate but…I’m very keen to explore this if there is anyone who could put up with my limitations.
For my own part, I’m willing to try again, now I’m back in the UK. My main issue is finding time to do it. I spend far too little time with my family as it is at the moment. Also, I think a challenge is deciding what to play.[/quote]
[quote=“Majik”] The issue here is we have a hard limit in the speed of light. Unless most of what we understand about Physics is completely wrong, then the speed of light is a hard limit.
London to Cape Town is approx 10,000km giving an absolute minimum round trip time of 40ms. The real-world practical rtt due to the speed of light alone is likely to be well over 100ms, due to fibre routes not being as the crow flies. The current average ping time is over 250ms.
These numbers are just way too high for real-time jamming, and always will be.
(And, no, quantum entanglement does not allow FTL communication).
There is the option for “delayed sync” applications, like Ninjam, although I’m not sure how effective these are. If you aren’t sure what they are, this document explains it pretty well:
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Delayed Sync applications are great for unstructured jamming, “noodling” on an instrument, and learning to improvise, but not good for playing through an entire song end-to-end or as a replacement for in-person band/chorus rehearsals. These applications solve latency by increasing it, from hundredths of a second to multiple measures.
Of course, the other option is to jam with more local musicians via a local server.[/quote]