Thoughts on jamming over the Internet

Zero Mercury Drummer

Zero Mercury Drummer

Senior Member
Since I am separated from my bandmates by some distance, we are hoping to get set up with a remote jamming capability. (My heart flutters when I consider that I can just walk to my drum room for rehearsal rather than spending hours lugging gear).
Has anybody tried "Jamkazam" and their little "jamblaster" thing?
https://www.jamkazam.com/products/jamblaster

Our audio guru guy thinks that the latency will be too long. I have read different things about Jamkazam. It seems like it could really be a game changer.

And what are the pitfalls of this type of rehearsal?
 
Just the internet ping going both ways will be over 30ms, before you even get into the processing on either end.
 
trynberg said:
Just the internet ping going both ways will be over 30ms, before you even get into the processing on either end.
Click to expand...

30ms plus processing delay. Humm. That's perfect for the drums when playing Led Zeppelin covers.

.
 
Overcoming latency is doable if someone throws enough money at it.

I think it would be a matter of reprocessing all the info on the user end.

There would obviously be a delay somewhere but what you would see and hear would be in "your" time.


As an option, you could all record AV and send it to the next guy to include his part. It wouldn't be live but it would be playing with your distant band mates.
 
It does sound like an interesting concept, if it works.

Personally I'll always prefer being in a room with bandmates but not having to travel the 2hours each way and playing in my own home 'studio' does sound tempting.

If you do go with it please keep us updated!

I guess another issue alongside any latency issues is getting fellow bandmates to invest in the gear you'll need to reproduce a room together the best you can. That could be tricky.
 
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Zero Mercury Drummer said:
Since I am separated from my bandmates by some distance, we are hoping to get set up with a remote jamming capability. (My heart flutters when I consider that I can just walk to my drum room for rehearsal rather than spending hours lugging gear).
Has anybody tried "Jamkazam" and their little "jamblaster" thing?
https://www.jamkazam.com/products/jamblaster

Our audio guru guy thinks that the latency will be too long. I have read different things about Jamkazam. It seems like it could really be a game changer.

And what are the pitfalls of this type of rehearsal?
Click to expand...

Yes ,the old latency or propagation delay conundrum.
TCP was meant to be reliable and error free ,not a real time transport mechanism.
 
Well that's where things are headed it seems.

Seems like a game changer. Hello future.
 
larryace said:
Well that's where things are headed it seems.

Seems like a game changer. Hello future.
Click to expand...

I guess they can fix it with Protools quantisation.
Who needs to be able to keep a beat(or sing on key) these days?
 
New Tricks said:
Overcoming latency is doable if someone throws enough money at it.

I think it would be a matter of reprocessing all the info on the user end.

There would obviously be a delay somewhere but what you would see and hear would be in "your" time.


As an option, you could all record AV and send it to the next guy to include his part. It wouldn't be live but it would be playing with your distant band mates.
Click to expand...

We can record and send each other things now. As you probably know it's not the same as real time improv jamming. It would also remove the locational aspect of finding like-minded musicians!
 
Wow, looks interesting if it works!

Sometimes the hardest part of being in my band is getting everyone in a room at the same time to practice together! I wonder if this sort of gadget could help.

Might never have to leave home ever again, except to gig...
 
It's interesting that they have built custom hardware to deal with local hardware issues, but as others have pointed out, it all boils down to the real speed (and real consistent speed) of everyone's Internet connection, with the lowest speed controlling.

This has sunk services before. The Gaikai and OnLive services were built with a similar idea - run video games in the cloud and stream audio/video to an endpoint. Works great if you live in a big city near a wide data pipe. Works horribly anywhere else.

Even in their sample video something seems just a little off with the timing. The push/pull of the latency would drive me crazy on feedback.
 
My theory is, the software would have to record all data from incoming sources and quickly replay it while syncing all the feeds. Although everyone's "live" feed would be slightly skewed in real time, it would't appear that way to the users.

I'm not sure what kind of markers would be use for the sync but I'm certain that someone somewhere can figure it out.
 
more than 5 MS latency would be a problem for me...and getting that performance is usually not realistic.
 
Audio data over the internet currently has ~200ms of latency + jitter. Best case on a private LAN is ~30-40ms, and that's still not practical for online real-time collaboration. We're barely to the point where we can have ethernet connected mixers and local LAN audio reinforcement.

On the plus side, a lot of effort is being put into decreasing latency. There's a couple good articles up on how remote-surgery is looking to improve/use the new tech. Musical collaboration may end up being a side benefit of medical innovations, in the same way that autotune has it's roots in the search for oil.

For now, my advice is that everyone agree on a DAW and continue leveraging the cloud for studio collaboration.
 
I've tried this with Jamkazam and Jammr and neither have worked. I have hardwired (ethernet) my laptop to the router and plugged my bass into my audio interface. Tried it with a young gent about a mile away. The lag was not in ms more like seconds. I can't call it latency because that would be a misnomer. He tried to fix it but to no avail.

As an aside, I would like to vote for the JamKazam software for the worst software awards. If you don't believe, see if you can get it to work without swearing.

I thought Jammr might have sussed this. If you run a metronome as part of the software, regardless of your lag, and all the metronomes were in sync then it could work. Having tried it I'm not so sure.

Peace
Davo
 
My bandmates and I have been using BandLab to collaborate. Everyone lays down a first initial track based on an original track. After this is done each member can mute their part and practice along with the rest of the band. It's been working out quite well and we think it's something we'll continue to do even after we're able to meet again. In between jam sessions we can all practice at home along with the band tracks. It also lets us try out different aspects of a song remotely. I know it's not quite what you're asking for but it's better than nothing given the current situation.
 
mrfingers said:
Anybody try Zoom? Group meetings, etc..?
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Had a group family meeting with family on Zoom yesterday, and it has the same lag/latency as has been discussed. You might get marginally better results on Microsoft Teams, who hosts on their own servers, instead of Amazon's Web Services (AWS).
 
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