6 ms·

Financial field isn't the only one that cares about latency. I'm still waiting for it to become feasible to jam (play music together) remotely. This gives me ho

by hakunin 14y ago

Financial field isn't the only one that cares about latency. I'm still waiting for it to become feasible to jam (play music together) remotely. This gives me hope, but the real solution is still far away. Interesting how despite all the tech progress this (deceivingly simple) problem is still unsolved.

owyn 14y ago
It's off topic, and it's only as real time as the network allows, but this project is pretty cool and has a good community around it: http://www.ohmstudio.com http://www.ohmstudio.com If you think about a recording studio experience, you usually lay down a rough basic track and overdub on top of it. In that case, latency doesn't really matter as much as good tools for collaboration and iteration.
notatoad 14y ago
no, there's lots of applications for low-latency connections. the reason algorithmic trading is special is that the financial people are the ones who have a valid business case for installing low-latency connections. is it worth a couple of billion dollars for you to jam remotely?
- dfox 14y ago
  Few years ago the main business case for low latency was telephony. And that is the reason why there is/was so much inertia with replacing various frame based TDM/SDH/SoNET systems with packet based solutions (this was whole reason why ATM was developed as it is sort of in between of these extremes but still does not have latency and QoS characteristics that were originally sought). These systems are designed to either induce constant latency (TDM, one frame period per switch) or induce lowest possible latency (SoNET/SDH with very clever mechanism to construct frames without knowing their full content and decoding them incrementally, which gives best case latency of few bit times + latency of any fiber interface, worst case comparable with traditional TDM). The problem with latency and telephony is two fold: echo cancellation for single pair analog phones (phone itself only substracts outgoing signal from incoming so anything that is echoed from other side of line goes through) and maximal latency for comfortable conversation (which is surprisingly small). First problem can be solved with smarter interfaces that do echo-cancellation in some DSP (some kind of license for doing that is major part of cost of analog interface cards for open source PC based softswitches), second not so much. So in all you can reasonably jam remotely (on distances of say less than 2000km) using this infrastructure and using it is probably few orders of magnitude cheaper (renting channels in SDH/SoNET optical networks is actually surprisingly cheap) than laying special fibres.
anigbrowl 14y ago
Given that the speed of light is approx 300,000 kilometers per second and that latency of greater than about 20ms starts to interfere with most musicians (and probably less for skilled artists), you're looking at a hard limit of about 6000km for a jam session, and that's assuming zero latency in the rest of the signal chain. In practice anything over 3000km/2000 mi is likely to be a problem, so live jams between NYC and Tokyo are probably never happening unlesss we come up with some clever way to exploit spooky action at a distance.
im3w1l 14y ago
Would it be acceptable if you hear their playing one beat late, and they hear your playing one beat late?

by hakunin 14y ago

owyn 14y ago

It's off topic, and it's only as real time as the network allows, but this project is pretty cool and has a good community around it: http://www.ohmstudio.com http://www.ohmstudio.com If you think about a recording studio experience, you usually lay down a rough basic track and overdub on top of it. In that case, latency doesn't really matter as much as good tools for collaboration and iteration.

notatoad 14y ago

no, there's lots of applications for low-latency connections. the reason algorithmic trading is special is that the financial people are the ones who have a valid business case for installing low-latency connections. is it worth a couple of billion dollars for you to jam remotely?

dfox 14y ago
Few years ago the main business case for low latency was telephony. And that is the reason why there is/was so much inertia with replacing various frame based TDM/SDH/SoNET systems with packet based solutions (this was whole reason why ATM was developed as it is sort of in between of these extremes but still does not have latency and QoS characteristics that were originally sought). These systems are designed to either induce constant latency (TDM, one frame period per switch) or induce lowest possible latency (SoNET/SDH with very clever mechanism to construct frames without knowing their full content and decoding them incrementally, which gives best case latency of few bit times + latency of any fiber interface, worst case comparable with traditional TDM). The problem with latency and telephony is two fold: echo cancellation for single pair analog phones (phone itself only substracts outgoing signal from incoming so anything that is echoed from other side of line goes through) and maximal latency for comfortable conversation (which is surprisingly small). First problem can be solved with smarter interfaces that do echo-cancellation in some DSP (some kind of license for doing that is major part of cost of analog interface cards for open source PC based softswitches), second not so much. So in all you can reasonably jam remotely (on distances of say less than 2000km) using this infrastructure and using it is probably few orders of magnitude cheaper (renting channels in SDH/SoNET optical networks is actually surprisingly cheap) than laying special fibres.

anigbrowl 14y ago

Given that the speed of light is approx 300,000 kilometers per second and that latency of greater than about 20ms starts to interfere with most musicians (and probably less for skilled artists), you're looking at a hard limit of about 6000km for a jam session, and that's assuming zero latency in the rest of the signal chain. In practice anything over 3000km/2000 mi is likely to be a problem, so live jams between NYC and Tokyo are probably never happening unlesss we come up with some clever way to exploit spooky action at a distance.

im3w1l 14y ago

Would it be acceptable if you hear their playing one beat late, and they hear your playing one beat late?