3 ms·

Latency is kind of funny in the context of jamming. Sound only travels about a foot per millisecond. An orchestra pit is thirty or forty feet across. A big fes

Latency is kind of funny in the context of jamming. Sound only travels about a foot per millisecond. An orchestra pit is thirty or forty feet across. A big festival stage can be thirty feet across. So we have these pretty ordinary situations where there's about thirty milliseconds of latency between when a drumstick strikes a head and a guitar player hears it. Of course, in a modern live pop performance there's all the crazy monitoring and latency compensation to try to make a football stadium acoustically comprehensible, but there is still the physical reality of how people normally play music together. If I ping google.com from my house, on my crummy wifi, right now I'm getting about 10ms. This is roughtly the latency a guitar player experiences standing at the end of a 10 foot cord from their amp between their pick plucking a string and the resulting sound striking their eardrums. Reality has latency.

smoe 6y ago
I was also thinking that keeping the latency constant across the group is much more important than keeping it as low as possible. Musicians could deal with 30ish ms delay once they get used to as they already do in situations you mentioned. Better than having it 10ms most of the time but with sudden drops for different players
teach 6y ago
Yes, but reality also has a lot of established patterns for minimizing that latency so people can play together live. Musicians in an orchestra pit or on a football field visually synchronize to a shared clock -- the conductor visibly keeping time. In a live setting, musicians use monitors (in-ear or wedges) that zip the sound of their bandmates to them via the speed of light. I've never seen virtual jamming over a network without a shared clock actually work, because once you get to 200ms round-trip it just doesn't work.
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  Have you seen it work well WITH a shared clock? Could you share details of the setup? Ty
kitotik 6y ago
Orchestras are playing (primarily) composed and prewritten music where deviating from the script would imply a poor musician. They look to a single source (the conductor) for tempo and dynamic cues. “Jamming” is much more dynamic, and uses a combination of audio and visual cues to work. The problem with even fantastic network latency in the 10ms range is this gets multiplied by the number of participants, and quickly turns into a shitshow. The only approach I’ve seen that even sorta works is the approach ninjam took with a hard coded and pre determined latency. It’s not the same as a real improv session with real humans in the room, and has obvious limitations, but can at least give a little of the same experience without the uncanny valley.
powersnail 6y ago
Reminds me of a marching band of a college. The drums and the brass section would gradually dis-synchronize, the sound disintegrated into chaos, until the conductor couldn't stand it and shouted at everyone. My guess is that the players weren't paying attention to the conductor at all. But even with zero auditory latency, musicians (classical musicians at least) don't really use sound to synchronize, because the cue must come before the sound is made. That's why in any competent orchestra, musicians rely on visual synchronization. For example, the string sections look at the concert master, who in turn communicate with the conductor and the soloist. In chamber music, the musicians constantly look, nod, and body gesture at each other to synchronize. The internet is competing with light not sound.
- cowmoo728 6y ago
  Typically this is why marching band field arrangements put the drumline in back. The drumline plays with the conductor's hands, and everyone else plays with the beat of the drumline as it travels forward towards the audience, therefore arriving synchronized to the audience. Drumline hears everyone else as dragging, brass thinks the woodwinds are dragging, but it all works out from the perspective of the audience.

smoe 6y ago

I was also thinking that keeping the latency constant across the group is much more important than keeping it as low as possible. Musicians could deal with 30ish ms delay once they get used to as they already do in situations you mentioned. Better than having it 10ms most of the time but with sudden drops for different players

teach 6y ago

Yes, but reality also has a lot of established patterns for minimizing that latency so people can play together live. Musicians in an orchestra pit or on a football field visually synchronize to a shared clock -- the conductor visibly keeping time. In a live setting, musicians use monitors (in-ear or wedges) that zip the sound of their bandmates to them via the speed of light. I've never seen virtual jamming over a network without a shared clock actually work, because once you get to 200ms round-trip it just doesn't work.

chrisweekly 6y ago
Have you seen it work well WITH a shared clock? Could you share details of the setup? Ty

kitotik 6y ago

Orchestras are playing (primarily) composed and prewritten music where deviating from the script would imply a poor musician. They look to a single source (the conductor) for tempo and dynamic cues. “Jamming” is much more dynamic, and uses a combination of audio and visual cues to work. The problem with even fantastic network latency in the 10ms range is this gets multiplied by the number of participants, and quickly turns into a shitshow. The only approach I’ve seen that even sorta works is the approach ninjam took with a hard coded and pre determined latency. It’s not the same as a real improv session with real humans in the room, and has obvious limitations, but can at least give a little of the same experience without the uncanny valley.

powersnail 6y ago

Reminds me of a marching band of a college. The drums and the brass section would gradually dis-synchronize, the sound disintegrated into chaos, until the conductor couldn't stand it and shouted at everyone. My guess is that the players weren't paying attention to the conductor at all. But even with zero auditory latency, musicians (classical musicians at least) don't really use sound to synchronize, because the cue must come before the sound is made. That's why in any competent orchestra, musicians rely on visual synchronization. For example, the string sections look at the concert master, who in turn communicate with the conductor and the soloist. In chamber music, the musicians constantly look, nod, and body gesture at each other to synchronize. The internet is competing with light not sound.

cowmoo728 6y ago
Typically this is why marching band field arrangements put the drumline in back. The drumline plays with the conductor's hands, and everyone else plays with the beat of the drumline as it travels forward towards the audience, therefore arriving synchronized to the audience. Drumline hears everyone else as dragging, brass thinks the woodwinds are dragging, but it all works out from the perspective of the audience.