Syncing multiple players on a video conference

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Ah, watched the video. Yes, I've heard of people doing this. I think a number of professional studios offer this kind of remote observation of mixing/mastering sessions. Certainly one kind of collaboration, tho not what musicians are currently asking for to play together. But it's nice to know there's an plugin available, that if I was mixing someone's stuff, they could watch. It'd also be cool for live recording demos, like someone here asking "how do you do this in Logic, or whatever". You could bring it up, connect them and do an in-person remote demo. The thing about using Zoom to hand over control to the other person is scary - that's what some of the current security concerns with Zoom are about, but it is what many companies offer with customer support.

There are all kinds of interesting ways to connect. Phil Keaggy at least used to have a gizmo that worked with 2 phone lines. Phone lines have a really narrow bandwidth, but this gizmo would split up the sound somehow, send each half over each of two phones, and then you had the same gizmo at the other end that would put it back together, sort of like a cross-over circuit. He was able to send audio at relatively high quality that way, apparently, over a phone.

Hi Doug

Zoom is what our church, and family, use to stay in touch, conduct small group and staff meetings. I'm not sure it's the right platform to stream music from/to. Pretty sure not…

I'm hoping for some technological advances in streaming, video sharing etc to come out of the lock-down/shelter-in-place uses of video conferencing to stay in touch.

Hopefully with increased bandwidth and internet speeds someone can make some progress in a way it's not geeky.

I used to carry a 6 space rack for my acoustic guitar rig, and now I carry a ToneDexter which sounds better & is much easier to deploy. I'd love a ToneDexter solution for jamming over the inter-webs.

[varmonter]

Interesting stuff. Im working on
video editing...Not really what the OP
was asking for..but its been an interesting learning experience for me.
I recorded a rythym guitar part. and sent
this to the bandmates. they recorded their parts wearing headphones listening
to my part and sent these files back to
me. I synced up each one . in my video
editing software.like tracks in a recording software.. Its coming along
nicely I still have a few things to do.
But i have a rough draft on you tube.
As far as a virtual jam..
Like mentioned above..Latency would kill it . And everyones bandwidth would
have to be up there. Mine,Living rural and wireless ,would not suffice. Like using bluetooth as a wireless guitar setup... The multiple landline connections seems plausible but not too
practical for us amateurs...Cell service is more one way at a time then people think. More like a walkie talkie than a landline..

.
.

[MikeBmusic]

Originally Posted by JBCROTTY

I organized an Online Acoustic Open Mic - we use Zoom. Zoom will not allow two people to play simultaneously - it isn't designed to support that audio load.

What we do is mute everyone on the session except for the person who's turn it is to play. That person plays - even this approach is not ideal - the guitar is distorted somewhat, especially if the person is signing.

The distortion or sound problem is not Zoom, it is whatever the person is using to input the sound to their computer or phone.
There are also audio settings in Zoom to adjust - 'enable original sound' (host must turn this option on for everyone). Turn off 'adjust volume automatically'. In advance settings, disable 'suppress persistent background noise' and 'suppress intermittent background noise'.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by MikeBmusic

The distortion or sound problem is not Zoom, it is whatever the person is using to input the sound to their computer or phone.
There are also audio settings in Zoom to adjust - 'enable original sound' (host must turn this option on for everyone). Turn off 'adjust volume automatically'. In advance settings, disable 'suppress persistent background noise' and 'suppress intermittent background noise'.

exactly. Those settings make a big difference. Still not usually what you'd hope for, because the internet gets in the way. I did a test broadcast just between my computer and my wife's, in the same house, tho still over zoom, the internet, wifi, etc, and it sounded bad without those settings, fantastic with those settings, really as good as one could ask for. But following up with a test with a friend cross country who has a pretty slow internet, the sound was again improved, but still pretty poor in an absolute sense. So much is out of our control.

Other things often have similar settings. Your webcam may have an auto-volume adjustment, as well, for example.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi Doug

I worked with those amounts of latency 15 years ago when digital recording had just begun. Learned to lean-into or lag-behind enough that it felt 'normal'. These days those numbers sound pretty staggering!

Those numbers are often optimistic. To take an extreme example, when I was doing Stageit shows some time back, I discovered that I could do a sound check by playing while broadcasting a private show from my living room, stop playing and run into my studio where I had a computer with another user watching the show, and actually see myself still playing! That had something to do with StageIt, which had like a 10-15 second buffer, and you obviously don't get anything that extreme with Skype, Facetime, Zoo, etc.

But whatever latency you get, it's one thing to be able to sort of "lean in" when overdubbing a recording to deal with latency, and another thing to have two people in real time, trying to do it, basically fighting each other due to the 2-way latency. It'd be like if while recording, you tried to adjust, only to have the recorder try to outsmart you and keep getting worse... :-)

I've tried a few more software platforms now that claim to solve this problem, so far, no luck.

[Br1ck]

I'm involved with trying to keep an open mic going. One performer at a time is all we want. As soon as you introduce a third person into the mix, a radical compression program kicks in, trying to mute what it considers the less dominant sound. This is exactly what you'd want for speech in a meeting format. Yes, we went into the Zoom settings and deactivated settings, but still did not arrive at anything resembling a one on one Facetime interaction.
Google, Webx, Facebook all had the same issue.