What’s New?
- Hear yourself better than ever
- Easier to update devices settings
- Cleaner audio with loss concealment
Hear yourself better than ever
It’s easier to make music with other people when you are able to find just the right balance between how loudly you hear yourself and how loudly you hear other people in the studio. We’ve made this a lot easier by introducing a new “Monitor” volume slider.
The Monitor volume slider controls how loudly you hear yourself. It can be set uniquely for every participant, and does not include any network latency. The “Studio” volume slider controls how loudly you hear everyone else in the studio. Use them together to find that perfect balance. Both of these change only what you hear, not how other people hear you.
The “Send” (or “Input”) volume slider adjusts how loudly other people in the studio hear you. We’ve added tooltips next to all three to help remind you what each one does. For convenience, you can also change any of these within the web interface by clicking on the three dots next to the microphone icon.
We previously recommended using a feature called “Self Volume” to adjust this balance. The “Self” was admittedly a bit misleading because it was a shared slider that impacted all participants in the studio. To help reduce confusion, we have renamed it to “Studio Loopback Volume.”
Unlike Monitor volume, Studio Loopback Volume also includes any additional network latency and soundscapes processing effects. This can be useful for testing, and some people find the additional delay/echo to help them adjust to network latency, but we now generally recommend that you set this to 0 (the default) and use the Monitor volume feature instead.
Easier to update devices settings
Have you ever joined a studio and realized that your sound is coming out of the wrong interface? We have found that people often mistakenly join studios using their speakers, and this creates a disturbing echo effect for everyone else. To fix this, you used to have to leave the studio, go into the desktop app settings, change your device, save settings, and re-Join the studio. No longer! Just click the “Change Device Settings” button and make any changes you need, without ever having to leave.
Cleaner audio with loss concealment
When your connection drops audio, other people can sometimes hear it as static, pops, clicks or other audio glitches. JackTrip’s loss concealment feature uses AI to improve the audio signal for less-than-perfect Internet connections. In most cases it makes these inaudible. We believe that this feature provides a better sounding audio experience for most people.
For loss concealment to be most effective, it has to be enabled on both the studio and the desktop app. A few months ago, we introduced loss concealment and made it the default “buffer strategy” setting for all new virtual studios. Older studios can easily enable it via the “Settings” tab.
With 1.9.0 we’re also enabling loss concealment by default for all new installations of the desktop app. This setting is not updated automatically when you upgrade. If you’re upgrading from an earlier release, you can enable it from the “Advanced” section of the “Settings” menu.
This release also includes many additional bug fixes, including improved support for Linux, Universal binary builds for Macs, and ASIO improvements for Windows.