Ideally we want latency to be as small as possible. But what if those one wants to make music with are at locations beyond the recommended distances?
I happen to have regular sessions with 4 and occasionally up to 7 participants, none of whom within the recommended distance from our server location.
This is not always easy, in particular at times when, occasionally, some connections suffer from disturbances. But leaving technical aspects of the internet and the individual setup aside, latency does not need to be prohibitive, even for collaborations between European and US East coast locations.
The key element for this to work is a solid rhythmic reference. A live drummer must be able to maintain a stable tempo and not get distracted by other players, particularly lead instruments or singers. An easy solution is to replace all or part of the rhythm section with prerecorded tracks or a backing generated on the spot with some software or other device.
With a solid rhythmic reference a singer located in New York can participate in a session with a saxophone in Madrid, keys in Montpellier, guitar in Grenoble, trumpet and vocals in Berlin, as well as further musicians in the north of England or in Italy.
As the number of musicians present on JackTrip is still rather limited within the recommended distance, it may help being aware that even with far more distant locations it is possible to engage in enjoyable musical activities.
I just wanted to add that uploading backing tracks to JackTrip and using the integrated music player will also benefit from latency synchronization. This adjusts playback so that everyone hears a beat at the same point in time. When you play a backing track from your computer, everyone will hear it at slightly different points in time.
Do I understand correctly that via the integrated music player everyone hears the beat at the same (global) time? Does this mean there are as many differently timed backing track streams as there are participants? Someone with a high latency would get sent the track earlier than those with lower latencies?
Right now the backing comes from my computer together with my own playing.
If, instead, I upload the backing to the studio, should I expect everybody to be more in sync with the backing track?
What happens when several participants try playing in unisson? Is this still another audio stream?
To take an extreme example: I am located in Europe and I have a studio in Auckland, NZ. Everybody from New Zealand plays in sync to a backing track on the server in Auckland, including myself despite a latency of over 200ms with my location in France. I would get the audio from the backing track early enough for my playing to reach Auckland at the same time as the audio of the others. This should work fine as long as I can concentrate on the backing track and not let myself be distracted by the live playing of other musicians.
I suppose the recording will be in sync . The real-time listening experience, however, would have, a hopefully reduced but still significant, latency.
@wollethom yes, a unique backing track stream is generated for each participant. Each stream is adjusted with delay to compensate for the connection’s average latency. When recording and live streaming, we also make adjustments with delays to line up all the stems as best we can. All this is the subject of one of our patents. Note that our integrated metronome works in a similar way.
The theory is that everyone hearing the track at the same point in time makes it easier to play in sync, even with higher latency in between one another. We’ve heard a lot of positive feedback that this makes a big difference. Of course, it’s all quite new. You have a lot more real experience using backing tracks, so I’d love to hear your feedback!
That is certainly worth experimenting with when I succeed in persuading some of my contacts in far away countries to try it out.
glad to see this discussion, thanks all - and happy to test with you
from here in faraway Southern California, Thomas!
Hi Synthia,
thank you for that offer. I am almost certain it works. I recorded myself from France in my Studio in New Zealand to a backing track that I had uploaded to that studio. It was perfectly in sync.
If we want to go completely wild, you and I could meet in my studio in Auckland and see how JackTrip will handle that.
What I still need to figure out is how to make best use of this. If we are several people in a session but at any given time there is only one playing to the backing track, the recording (and I guess also the live stream) should be fine.
When more than one player is playing the latency between individual players (I suppose) will be very audible during the session and everybody needs to listen attentively to the backing track rather than to other players. That requires good selective listening skills.
If meeting in Auckland turns out to be beyond what we can tolerate, we could go to my studio in NYC, which should be easy for both of us.
What would be a good time for us to meet? I am 9 hours ahead of you. I am retired and available during waking hours.
you’re welcome and congrats! it sounds like you got a handle on it. I
neglected to consider that my schedule is a bit erratic these days and
scheduling +9 will be a challenge. In the meantime, please keep us
posted on your findings. Thank you!