Playing live over the internet with low/no latency? Is it even possible?

[smatanovic]

My cousin is a guitarist and when we got together last summer we really enjoyed playing together. Here's the rub: he lives in Munich, DE, and I in Philadelphia, in the US, and so getting together to play is not a thing that we can do very often. Does anyone know of a way to play together over the internet? We both have reliable/stable connections via our respective ISPs, but given the latency and compression I experience every day with the likes of Zoom/Teams/Facetime, those solutions doesn't really sound practicable.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Raenil]

Unlikely. In the best of cases, you will probably have more than 150 ms latency between you.

Sonobus should be able to let you try, it is open source software with peer to peer communication. Depending on hardware in your endpoints, additional delay should be minimal.

SonoBus User Guide

www.sonobus.net

 

[srosenthal13]

I've tried FarPlay with my guitarist/songwriting partner. I'm near the Bay Area in California and he's in Portland.

At best, we got down to between 20 and 30ms latency, which was somewhat playable. But there were always brutal latency spikes. I don't blame FarPlay for that, it's just the nature of the Internet.

I did a traceroute check between our houses and it was something on the order of 13 hops. That's a lot of routing and switching hardware between us.

I won't get into details about our home network configurations, but even with good gear, good wall speeds, etc., we're still dependent on infrastructure we have no control over.

All this to say, it's a very tough nut to crack, so don't get your hopes up.

FarPlay does have a free tier, I believe (it did a couple of years ago). You should give it a try and see if you have playable results.

 

[Shenron]

I've been thinking of asking this myself... I have friends in other countries which would be great to play together with sometimes. There are videos on YouTube of people playing remotely (especially during the pandemic) and at least in some case I think they were in different European countries.

 

[Wasnex]

It's not possible and (AFAIK) with the current way the internet transports data in packets, it never will be.

 

[monsterthompson]

Unlikely. In the best of cases, you will probably have more than 150 ms latency between you.

Sonobus should be able to let you try, it is open source software with peer to peer communication. Depending on hardware in your endpoints, additional delay should be minimal.

SonoBus User Guide

www.sonobus.net

I’ve worked with Sonobus for a collaboration and it really only worked because we were doing free time ambient/noise material. Playing with any sort of clock/tempo would’ve been challenging.

There are a free options to try.
Jamulus is one and Jamkazam is another. I have no experience with these.
This video might have some good info. It starts with what appears to be a live online jam.

 

[lermgalieu]

My cousin is a guitarist and when we got together last summer we really enjoyed playing together. Here's the rub: he lives in Munich, DE, and I in Philadelphia, in the US, and so getting together to play is not a thing that we can do very often. Does anyone know of a way to play together over the internet? We both have reliable/stable connections via our respective ISPs, but given the latency and compression I experience every day with the likes of Zoom/Teams/Facetime, those solutions doesn't really sound practicable.

Thanks in advance.

Short answer is no

 

[devnulljp]

No

There are videos on YouTube of people playing remotely (especially during the pandemic) and at least in some case I think they were in different European countries.

Pretty sure those were all done with a click track and played as multitrack recordings. One player played their part and sent it on; the next player played their part; and so on. Not live.

 

[bullshark]

There's Ninjam which keep the latency synchronized to measures, so you can play on tempo. Never used it myself, but looks interesting. It's by the same guys who make Reaper. Cockos Incorporated | NINJAM

 

[sawzalot]

Check out SyncStage | Ultra Fast Audio Pipeline. They have a technology that is good at reducing latency and also making it consistent.

 

[mambo4]

The problem is: you don't know the signal route, so you cannot control the latency.

 

[SDC1-ClickClack]

 

[Pings Bass]

No.

I've worked in commercial streaming video (and audio) for 10 years, and it's not even on the horizon. It's theoretically possible, but there's not enough of a market to invest in the transport layer innovations necessary to facilitate this.

Tracking/layering is the best you can do at a distance.

 

[BAG]

The only thing you can really do effectively is one of you play and your friend plays along with you.

I managed this with a drum track and me playing bass while a friend overseas played guitar over my rhythm section. I had to have my speakers off so I couldn't hear him. He had a great time soloing over the rhythm track while I basically listened to myself play bass along with the drum track.

 

[xposaune]

Check this out: Make Music Together Online | JackTrip Labs

It's possible depending on distance. You also have some tech set up to do - everyone on wired ethernet for example. Can read more about it at the link above (no affiliation but I know the founders).

 

[MultiScaleMale]

Possible? Maybe, if your distance isn't too far and your expectations aren't too high - like everyone in the same studio experience. The speed of light is only so fast and your data needs to be processed at multiple stops along the way. During Covid we tried Jamkazam and it worked for two people, sometimes three, but when we went to four people we could rarely make it through a song.

 

[dmt]

Possible? Maybe, if your distance isn't too far and your expectations aren't too high - like everyone in the same studio experience. The speed of light is only so fast and your data needs to be processed at multiple stops along the way. During Covid we tried Jamkazam and it worked for two people, sometimes three, but when we went to four people we could rarely make it through a song.

He’s only talking about two people. So, maybe this Jamkazam can do the trick

 

[MultiScaleMale]

He’s only talking about two people. So, maybe this Jamkazam can do the trick

Maybe. Remember the biggest thing - don't use WiFi!! We were on the same provider and physically close, like within 25 miles. So that helped.

 

[erratick]

No but trading synced tracks can work.

Satellite sessions is fine, and there are other alternatives. But live at that kind of distance there is too much latency.

 

[fdeck]

I've used Jamulus. During the pandemic, a friend of mine held a weekly jazz jam on Jamulus. Here's my experience. If the latency isn't extreme, your brain will automatically cause you to play your notes ahead of when you hear them, and a couple of players can actually sync with one another.

After all, this is how playing works anyway. You have to start a note before you expect it to come out of your instrument, e.g., just to be able to pull back on the string at the right time. Your brain takes care of this for you.

However, this only works if you're listening to the mix from your computer with headphones or earbuds that have good isolation. If you can hear the acoustic sound of your instrument and the sound from the mix at the same time, your brain will automatically lock to whatever comes first, and you will experience a powerful force causing the music to slow down.

For this reason, I was able to tolerate it when I was playing my electric bass with high quality headphones, but my upright bass, forget it. Likewise the people who were playing electric instruments such as keyboard did OK. Vocalists had it the worst.

It was also extremely difficult to get a bunch of musicians to understand the technical side of it, including the issue with isolation, and it just got so tiring to be the only guy holding the tempo, that it was not enjoyable. But I think a couple of people with electric instruments and a reasonable level of tech savvy should be able to do it.

We didn't try any of the other services, so I can't say how they compare.