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How to build a billion dollar audio app in a weekend

76 points by kwindla 6y ago

thrillhouse 6y ago
I was part of the team that worked on this. Here's a link to the live (React) demo if you want to try it out: https://partyline.daily.co/ https://partyline.daily.co/
- remram 6y ago
  Is there a way I can get an idea of what it's like, without having to grab a couple of friends (within the 10 minutes)?
  - thrillhouse 6y ago
    Yeah! You can join from multiple browsers/tabs or from different computers/devices.
ragtagtag 6y ago
Interesting stuff! One of my clients uses Daily.co and it's a great system: much easier to use and more reliable than Zoom, especially since you're not forced into downloading software. It'll just run in your browser. I'd love to see it get broader fame.
- remram 6y ago
  Zoom runs in the browser just fine (as long as that browser is Chrome, at least).
  - ggggtez 6y ago
    In my experience, this is not true. The web version is missing features that the desktop version has. Zoom also uses dark patterns to try to get you to install the desktop app, even if you could join via browser.
  - kwindla 6y ago
    Zoom is great, but I'd quibble with "just fine." Zoom's browser client doesn't use the browser's underlying WebRTC implementation for encoding/decoding and bandwidth management. Instead, Zoom cross-compliled their proprietary h264 and network stack to web assembly, and that does the heavy lifting. Which is a really, really cool hack. But the wasm instruction set is much more limited than what you can do in natively compiled code, and access to the browser's networking internals are similarly constrained. The Zoom web client doesn't -- and probably won't ever, with this architecture -- be able to do a good job with calls with more than 4 or 5 participants, or be able to handle the full range of real-world network conditions that are necessary to achieve what I'd call "just fine" for broad use cases. Conversely, Zoom's desktop client defines call quality for all of the rest of us working on this stuff. Our goal at Daily is explicitly to get to as good as Zoom, for all use cases, running in the web browser. For "normal" video calls up to about 12 people, we're there now. For larger calls, especially on low-end hardware, there's still work to do.
pkiv 6y ago
Daily's SDK is such a joy to work with. I tried to do it myself using mediasoup, but the complexity of managing all the state was creating a ton of bugs.
- kwindla 6y ago
  We love mediasoup! Whether or not you're using Daily, I'm always happy to try to be helpful with mediasoup-level stuff. You can find me various ways, including by pinging us via live chat on our website. (And thank you for the kind words.)
cupofcoffee 6y ago
Where are your billion dollars? :)
- kwindla 6y ago
  Here: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/a1075db55d416d3ca199f55b6084e2115b9345e16c5cf302fc80e9d5fbf5d48d https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/a1075db55d416d3ca199f55b60...
asdev 6y ago
super click baity title
pepemon 6y ago
Shameless ad with the clickbait headline.
- kwindla 6y ago
  Intended to be tongue in cheek, not click bait. ymmv. Direct link to the sample code if you prefer: https://github.com/daily-demos/party-line https://github.com/daily-demos/party-line Cross-platform quirks still make doing WebRTC hacking difficult enough that we very much think it's worth publishing both sample code and tutorials at varying levels of detail. And we try to make them entertaining. This one has working code for the web, React Native, iOS native, and Android native. We get asked how to make things work cross-platform *a lot*.

76 points by kwindla 6y ago

I was part of the team that worked on this. Here's a link to the live (React) demo if you want to try it out: https://partyline.daily.co/ https://partyline.daily.co/

remram 6y ago
Is there a way I can get an idea of what it's like, without having to grab a couple of friends (within the 10 minutes)?
- thrillhouse 6y ago
  Yeah! You can join from multiple browsers/tabs or from different computers/devices.

ragtagtag 6y ago

Interesting stuff! One of my clients uses Daily.co and it's a great system: much easier to use and more reliable than Zoom, especially since you're not forced into downloading software. It'll just run in your browser. I'd love to see it get broader fame.

remram 6y ago
Zoom runs in the browser just fine (as long as that browser is Chrome, at least).
- ggggtez 6y ago
  In my experience, this is not true. The web version is missing features that the desktop version has. Zoom also uses dark patterns to try to get you to install the desktop app, even if you could join via browser.
- kwindla 6y ago
  Zoom is great, but I'd quibble with "just fine." Zoom's browser client doesn't use the browser's underlying WebRTC implementation for encoding/decoding and bandwidth management. Instead, Zoom cross-compliled their proprietary h264 and network stack to web assembly, and that does the heavy lifting. Which is a really, really cool hack. But the wasm instruction set is much more limited than what you can do in natively compiled code, and access to the browser's networking internals are similarly constrained. The Zoom web client doesn't -- and probably won't ever, with this architecture -- be able to do a good job with calls with more than 4 or 5 participants, or be able to handle the full range of real-world network conditions that are necessary to achieve what I'd call "just fine" for broad use cases. Conversely, Zoom's desktop client defines call quality for all of the rest of us working on this stuff. Our goal at Daily is explicitly to get to as good as Zoom, for all use cases, running in the web browser. For "normal" video calls up to about 12 people, we're there now. For larger calls, especially on low-end hardware, there's still work to do.

pkiv 6y ago

Daily's SDK is such a joy to work with. I tried to do it myself using mediasoup, but the complexity of managing all the state was creating a ton of bugs.

kwindla 6y ago
We love mediasoup! Whether or not you're using Daily, I'm always happy to try to be helpful with mediasoup-level stuff. You can find me various ways, including by pinging us via live chat on our website. (And thank you for the kind words.)

cupofcoffee 6y ago

Where are your billion dollars? :)

kwindla 6y ago
Here: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/a1075db55d416d3ca199f55b6084e2115b9345e16c5cf302fc80e9d5fbf5d48d https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/a1075db55d416d3ca199f55b60...

asdev 6y ago

super click baity title

pepemon 6y ago

Shameless ad with the clickbait headline.

kwindla 6y ago
Intended to be tongue in cheek, not click bait. ymmv. Direct link to the sample code if you prefer: https://github.com/daily-demos/party-line https://github.com/daily-demos/party-line Cross-platform quirks still make doing WebRTC hacking difficult enough that we very much think it's worth publishing both sample code and tutorials at varying levels of detail. And we try to make them entertaining. This one has working code for the web, React Native, iOS native, and Android native. We get asked how to make things work cross-platform *a lot*.