3 ms·

Am I the only one who thinks it's lame that nothing sounds bad? Makes me feel like I'm playing with a children's toy. I don't feel like I've done something inte

Am I the only one who thinks it's lame that nothing sounds bad? Makes me feel like I'm playing with a children's toy. I don't feel like I've done something interesting by playing in tune with others since it's all in tune... it restricts possibilities drastically

meowface 4y ago
I agree with you, but, pitch-stuff aside, the time issue is an inescapable constraint. You can't have perfectly live simultaneous collaborative playing over the internet; things will inevitably be out-of-time for many. Due to the speed of light, you actually can never reasonably achieve this for two people maximally separated across Earth, even with hypothetical perfect technology and latency at its theoretical minimum. If the participants are both very close in physical space, like on a LAN or something close to it, latency could potentially be minimized enough to make it acceptable, but that's pretty much it. If your goal is to make something as accessible as possible to as many global internet users as possible, you either need a) some degree of time quantization (which makes it more rigid and less musical and creative) or b) some kind of buffering and/or turn-taking system (basically, overdubbing, which makes it less "live-collaborative" / "jam-like" and potentially less enjoyable to participate in compared to something more live). At least, this is my understanding of the problem. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
- xnorswap 4y ago
  In a large orchestra, you can have people sitting 10m away from each other which given the slow speed of sound is 30ms between them. A 60ms round-trip means that if they were to each try to play in time with the other by sound it would get horrendously out of sync quickly. Which is why the conductor is so important. I'd guess concert players must have to train themselves to "tune out" what they're hearing and focus on the conductor because the whole thing is set up for the benefit of the audience.

meowface 4y ago

I agree with you, but, pitch-stuff aside, the time issue is an inescapable constraint. You can't have perfectly live simultaneous collaborative playing over the internet; things will inevitably be out-of-time for many. Due to the speed of light, you actually can never reasonably achieve this for two people maximally separated across Earth, even with hypothetical perfect technology and latency at its theoretical minimum. If the participants are both very close in physical space, like on a LAN or something close to it, latency could potentially be minimized enough to make it acceptable, but that's pretty much it. If your goal is to make something as accessible as possible to as many global internet users as possible, you either need a) some degree of time quantization (which makes it more rigid and less musical and creative) or b) some kind of buffering and/or turn-taking system (basically, overdubbing, which makes it less "live-collaborative" / "jam-like" and potentially less enjoyable to participate in compared to something more live). At least, this is my understanding of the problem. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

xnorswap 4y ago
In a large orchestra, you can have people sitting 10m away from each other which given the slow speed of sound is 30ms between them. A 60ms round-trip means that if they were to each try to play in time with the other by sound it would get horrendously out of sync quickly. Which is why the conductor is so important. I'd guess concert players must have to train themselves to "tune out" what they're hearing and focus on the conductor because the whole thing is set up for the benefit of the audience.