Virtual Rehearsal Software

C

chrisxs2003

Inspired
Anyone have any experience with setting up a virtual band practice? I would think latency could be a real problem but one of the guys in my band wants to give it a try. As I understand it, there are several apps/softwares available.

More than anything, we're just trying to find a way to make the most of a bad situation
 
Latency is always going to be a big problem here. If everyone has a superb connection, you're 10-20ms delay. Average high speed home connection? ~50ms at least. Drummer hits a kick, takes 50ms to get to you, then 50ms back for your 'response' note. That's ignoring any io delay on your interface, pc, etc. It'd be rather tricky to stay in sync because even 50ms is quite noticeable, and this is going into >100ms range. If everyone syncs perfectly on their end with the drums, then the drummer hears everything at that delay. I'm guessing ninjam has some sort of way to help minimize this with buffers or something, but you can't defeat physics... there's going to be a delay.
 
negativefx said:
Latency is always going to be a big problem here. If everyone has a superb connection, you're 10-20ms delay. Average high speed home connection? ~50ms at least. Drummer hits a kick, takes 50ms to get to you, then 50ms back for your 'response' note. That's ignoring any io delay on your interface, pc, etc. It'd be rather tricky to stay in sync because even 50ms is quite noticeable, and this is going into >100ms range. If everyone syncs perfectly on their end with the drums, then the drummer hears everything at that delay. I'm guessing ninjam has some sort of way to help minimize this with buffers or something, but you can't defeat physics... there's going to be a delay.
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Ninjam works by increasing the delay. Usually you're several measures behind the other people. It's kind of like playing with a dynamic backing track.
 
I tried JamKazam awhile ago with just a bass player (not a full band) and we couldn't get anything useful out of it. We tried it with and without video - obviously better without the video, but still worth more effort than we wanted to put in.
 
We're just not there yet with consumer solutions and consumer connection speeds. WebRTC was a huge step forward but it's still at the mercy of connection speeds and painfully susceptible to packet loss. Current "acceptable" industry latency for VoIP is anything below 200 ms, which as guitarists dialing in delays, we know is far from an acceptable latency for playing music in time with others.

There are more robust connections and hardware solutions that have been and are used by recording studios, post-production houses, etc., but $$$.
 
Even though it isn't ideal, and it won't have the same "interactions" you get when jamming together live, it might be worth having the drummer lay down his part in Logic, Garage Band, whatever your flavor, and let the others add on, one by one. Then have the compilation shared to each band member, where they can mute what they originally played, and can then play "with" the recorded conglom of the other members. Just an idea that MIGHT have less frustrations. Plus, you don't have to wait for "Jimmy" to get off his dang phone, or "Rog" to get out of the toilet. :rolleyes:
 
Smittefar said:
That makes no sense - Who is first, and what does that person hear?
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Here’s how their website describes it:

The NINJAM client records and streams synchronized intervals of music between participants. Just as the interval finishes recording, it begins playing on everyone else's client. So when you play through an interval, you're playing along with the previous interval of everybody else, and they're playing along with your previous interval. If this sounds pretty bizarre, it sort of is, until you get used to it, then it becomes pretty natural. In many ways, it can be more forgiving than a normal jam, because mistakes propagate differently.
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Most servers seem to have the latency set to 16 or 32 beats.
 
I actually saw that the other day - he must have made small changes for the newest reaper version and re-uploaded today (I also watched the re-upload, it is roughly the same)
 
Sounds like NINJAM is good for, well, actual jams, and less for song rehearsals where you're all supposed to go onto the next part at the same time.
 
You want your sound to travel through a bunch of equipment, miles, in the same time it takes to travel 6ft in your rehearsal studio, ah no.
 
The only time I've seen actual "real-time" remote music collaboration was a demonstration at the SuperComputing conference back in like 2009 or 2010 where they were hooked up to an ultra low latency link to Internet2 between the conference centre and a university lab and had musicians at each location perform together. But that was all using equipment and fibre links not even available to general public.
 
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