Recommendations for live jam software to jam with buddies over the net.

cooder

Well-known member
Howdy, has anyone experience with live jam software to practice with mates over the internet without lag / latency or at least tolerable?
What are the ins and outs?
Any recommendations?
Thanks so much!
 
Toyed with this during covid with a few buddies. Was a good change of pace but still sucked. Can't remember what all we tried. I remember it was 3 different services. Latency will be an issue. The best I do I can give you is have everyone monitor one leader only. Then your not compiling late reaction over late reaction. That will get frustrating quick. You can then go back and listen to the recording. Select a new leader from there.
Or just track 2 people at first then layers individually.
With a quick googling, farplay and sonobus look promising and are free
 
Donteport back if you find a service that works out well for you and co. Would love to try it again.
There's also some collaborative daws out there where basically everyone records a take individually then upload it to the other parties. Advantage being you are realtime monitoring when tracking.
Probably better for small groups or spare time collaborative writing.
 
You better hope those people are in NZ! :D

Generally, it's a physical problem. There's latency introduced by your analog to digital setup (ie. the audio interface and computer), and then latency across your network between the people you're jamming with. The network latency is the hardest to resolve, there is the speed of copper or light which is the best you can get, and then the fact that most network routes aren't a straight line.
 
@szukalski yes within NZ however of course the connection goes over server who knows where... at least I'm on fiber, even though I'm in the sticks haha...
 
Ideally, you want to make connections between all participants directly, any server in the middle is going to be untolerable latency. Sorry, I can't recommend any programs to help. I have no friends.
 
Howdy, has anyone experience with live jam software to practice with mates over the internet without lag / latency or at least tolerable?
What are the ins and outs?
Any recommendations?
Thanks so much!
Reaper has an extension available for multiple source jamming over the web that I used during the 'vid. It uses a click track so I don't know if I could call it "jammin" but it works.
 
As others have mentioned, latency is going to be your greatest challenge. In 2020, I got this working via JackTrip (instructions here, though it now seems to have turned into a commercial offering). I was in SF and my friend was in Portland, ~600 miles away. Latency becomes noticeable/intolerable above 25ms, and we couldn't reliably keep it under 35ms. So, it was fun for a few minutes but not really a viable option.

Might work fine over a shorter distance and/or better connection though!
 
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