What’s New?
- New JackTrip VST3 Plugin
- New Audio Quality Slider
- New Linux ARM Builds
New JackTrip VST3 Plugin
JackTrip used to require using virtual channels to perform complicated audio routing in order to:
- Share your DAW online
- Play MIDI instruments
- Use guitar amp simulators
- Play backing tracks (locally)
- Record your JackTrip sessions (locally)
Not any more!
VST3 is a popular plugin standard supported by most live performance hosts and DAWs, such as Ableton Live and Reason. After upgrading to JackTrip 2.5, these will have a new “JackTrip Audio Bridge” (effects) plugin available. Sharing and collaborating online with these apps is now as easy as dragging and dropping it into your tracks!
JackTrip’s Audio Bridge shares lossless audio directly with its Desktop App, while introducing the least amount of latency possible (typically a single block of frames, or a few milliseconds). You can simultaneously run as many audio bridges as you want, even across different applications!
We’ve made the interface as simple as possible, providing only two knobs for adjustments:
- The “Send” knob adjusts volume for the audio it sends to the Desktop App. You will see this signal appear in the “Input” volume meters at the bottom left corner of the Desktop App’s user interface. Adjust this as necessary to prevent clipping in the audio you send to others online.
- The “Output Mix” knob adjusts the audio that is delivered back to your host application (i.e. DAW). By default, it will simply “pass-through” the same audio that it receives. Turn the dial towards the right to blend in the “Studio” and “Monitor” audio from the Desktop App. You can use this to record live sessions.
The light in the upper right corner of the Audio Bridge indicates whether it’s connected to the Desktop App (green) or not (red).
Here are some popular apps you can now share online using JackTrip’s Audio Bridge:
- Ableton Live*
- Ardour*
- Audacity*
- Bitwig Studio
- Cakewalk
- Cantabile
- Cubase
- Digital Performer
- DJ Studio
- Element*
- FL Studio
- Gig Performer
- LiveProfessor
- LUNA
- NanoHost
- PedalBoard2
- Plugin Buddy
- Reaper*
- Reason*
- Studio One
- and many more…
So far, we have tested the ones with an asterisk (*) next to them. We’re considering this to be a “beta” release because there are so many available that we cannot possibly test them all ourselves. Please try it out and let us know how well it works with your favorites!
We recognize there are other audio plugin formats out there, and in particular two very popular DAWs which do not currently support VST3. We plan to add support for additional formats in the future.
New Audio Quality Slider
JackTrip uses AI to minimize audio latency across a wide range of Internet connections. But many people use JackTrip today in ways where latency is not a top priority.
Previous releases included features to control the balance between audio latency and quality, but they were not so easy to use. Each participant had to make manual adjustments, and these couldn’t be performed during a live session. Consequently, we hid them under “Advanced” settings.
With JackTrip 2.5, we’re introducing a completely new approach. The next time you open the “Studio” menu during a live session, you’ll find a new “Audio Quality” slider:
When it’s all the way to the left (the default position), JackTrip will automatically try to find the best balance between latency and quality for you. But if you ever hear a glitch you don’t like, just drag it to the right. The further you drag it towards the right, the more latency JackTrip will allow for each person’s connection. You should hear the result of any changes within a second, making it much easier to find the optimal balance for each session.
This is a global setting that applies to all participants, but it will not add a fixed amount of latency for everyone, like you may find elsewhere. Instead, it simply adjusts our algorithm to allow for a higher (or lower) amount of latency before AI predictions kick in. The amount that is actually used can be significantly less.
If you click on the “Devices” button when connected to a live session with the Desktop App, you’ll find a new “Audio Quality” section at the bottom. Here you can see how much latency is actually being used for your individual connection. It also gives you the option to override the studio’s global setting.
Most people will find that our default automatic settings work great and never need to adjust this, but if you don’t care about latency or just want to improve audio quality to adapt to someone’s less than stellar Internet connection, just drag this slider to the right until it sounds good to you.
New Linux ARM Builds
Starting with JackTrip 2.5, we are publishing Linux release builds for ARM processors:
arm64builds are now available for more modern, 64-bit Linux ARM distributions. This includes JackTrip’s Desktop App, which works great on sub-$100 computers like the Raspberry Pi 5!- The “nogui”
arm32builds are compatible with JackTrip’s original Analog and Digital Bridge devices
You can download the new Linux ARM builds from our GitHub releases page.
