Why can’t musicians jam with each other online without latency or other issues?

| by Caleb Dolister | Medium

El siguiente artículo trata de los problemas que enfrentan los músicos para
tocar juntos en línea.

¿Porque los músicos no pueden tocar juntos con

otros en línea sin latencia u otros problemas?
por Caleb Dolister
Abril 4

Es el año 2020, la banda ancha está por todos lados. Las redes son rápidas. Si
podemos unirnos a un servidor MMP de juegos de multijugadores; que soporta cientos de
usuarios con una latencia baja, ¿Por qué no pueden un par de músicos sincronizar y tocar
juntos?

Para casi todo musico, el COVID-19 ha causado muchos trastornos. Aparte de los
problemas de salud, se incluyen giras canceladas, suspensión de compromisos laborales
particulares, dictado clases, así como la suspensión de los trabajos de grabación o estudio.
En un mundo ideal, este tiempo fuera podría haber sido empleado productivamente para
trabajar desde casa practicando, pero los músicos necesitamos ensayar y componer con
otros músicos. Los profesores de música están también bajo la presión de los padres y los
comités de las escuelas para encontrar una manera de interactuar a distancia con sus
estudiantes de las bandas. Es increíblemente pesado para la enseñanza, el cambiar las clases
de banda a clases individuales de 40 a 50 estudiantes.

Netflix ha creado “watching parties,” los compañeros de trabajo tienen happy hours en
Zoom, donde millones de jugadores pueden entrar en línea al mismo tiempo para luchar
juntos contra villanos virtuales. Parece ser que todos tienen una manera de trabajar juntos en
línea, excepto los músicos.

La idea de reunirse para tocar música en línea no es nueva. Los desarrolladores han venido
trabajando en ella por años y los músicos que aprovechan esta tecnología han estado
bajando aplicaciones en forma entusiasta, comprando hardware para probarlos y hacerlos
funcionar. Hay modos de hacerlos funcionar, pero la latencia es inevitable, incluso con las
configuraciones de equipo más profesionales.

Parece ser que los músicos de todos lados están buscando respuestas a la pregunta: Porque
incluso con la conexión de banda ancha y la tecnología actual ¿Por qué aún no se puede
realizar trabajo en línea?

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 Why can’t musicians jam with each other online without latency or other issues? | by Caleb Dolister | Medium

Motion, Video Games, Baseball, and the Brain’s Fantastic

Ability for Prediction
Latency has been tormenting online gamers since the dialup days. As a kid playing
Quake in the late 90’s from a small mountain town in Northern California, I remember
feeling like I had a bomb-proof connection when my community’s dialup network provided
250ms.

Why? Honestly, I didn’t know better. There was no broadband in my town, or most small
towns at that time. Gamers like myself learned how to play with whatever latency they had
by anticipating what other players would do, and compensating by analyzing motion. It was
less about see-and-react and more about see-and-predict.

Similarly, Major League Baseball hitters talk about the speed of trying to watch a fastball
from the moment it leaves the hand until it crosses the plate. It actually happens too fast to
react in real time. Hitters instead look for movement which allows them to predict where the
ball will go. It takes about 300ms–400ms for the pitch to arrive at the plate, roughly the
same amount of time it takes to blink an eye, and batters have about 150ms to react before
it’s too late to even swing the bat.

“You really only have about 150 milliseconds to make a decision while the pitch is coming
toward you… A fair and foul ball, the difference is having your bat in the right place by
about 5–7 milliseconds.”

Our brains have amazing abilities with reaction time. If we can do so much with 5ms, 10ms,
even 300ms, why does latency have such a negative impact with music?

In truth, we already deal with latency in music all the time.

Music and sound travel at varying speeds depending on factors like altitude, temperature,
humidity, frequency and more. Here’s an interesting chart showing measured sonic latency.
In general, we can assume sound travels at about 18ms per 20'.

Consider how far you typically setup from other musicians in a live setting. If you’re
playing acoustic music on a big stage (no monitors), you’re already compensating for
latency. Acceptable latency for recording is usually around 10-12ms. While humans can
detect latency at about 5ms, that means starting at around 15', we start to notice problems in
latency in a live setting. Anyone that has played a big stage without amps, or in an orchestra
or marching band can back this up.

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 Why can’t musicians jam with each other online without latency or other issues? | by Caleb Dolister | Medium

Distance is a problem for musicians. For any readers that are unfamiliar with how time is
calculated in music, speed is interpreted as a number of beats per minute (bpm), called a
tempo. 60bpm = 1 beat per second, 120bpm = 2 beats per second, and so on. If the tempo of
a song is 120bpm, this equates to 500ms between beats (1sec=1000ms, .5sec=500ms). At a
distance of 20', there is a natural latency of 18ms causing that 500ms/120bpm to feel like
518ms/115bpm. In layman’s terms, it feels like the other player is performing at a slower
speed even if they are not. To compensate for this natural occurrence of latency, larger
bands use conductors so that there is a visual representation of time.

It’s entirely possible for some configurations to play without a conductor. For example, a
smaller ensemble can learn to adjust and follow their internal tempos rather than what is
heard real-time from across the stage. We can compensate for latency when it’s consistent.

It becomes impossible in a larger setting with multiple players and latencies, especially
when those latencies are changing.

Consider a typical marching band where there may be over 100 musicians spread out across
an entire football field. Players on the edge can be separated by long distances, some are
just a few feet apart, but the band is always moving. At any given time, these players hear
the person next to them at about 5ms, the person 10' away at about 9ms, 20' at 18ms, all the
way up to players 200' away at 180ms. Without a conductor, it’s a mess. If latency a
challenge while consistent, dealing with multiple latencies that are changing becomes a
crisis.

Jamming online, unfortunately, is just like being in different parts of the field in a marching
band. Each player is going to have a different latency depending on where they are in
relation to the common server, and that latency will change because of network congestion.

The Deal Breaker: Variation

To demonstrate how our connections are not constant, run a ping test to 8.8.8.8. That IP is
the primary DNS server for Google DNS and is one of the most robust, consistent servers
on the entire internet.

You’ll notice that the results fluctuate for each packet sent. Sometimes it can jump by
+5ms…. -10ms… -1ms…. +7ms….., or the packet can get dropped entirely. It’s rarely the
same.

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 Why can’t musicians jam with each other online without latency or other issues? | by Caleb Dolister | Medium

This is caused by network traffic and in a music setting, creates a problem because each
musician in an online session is going to have these fluctuations. There are no solutions to
predict and compensate for network traffic.

In conclusion
We probably could learn to deal with latency in the range of 20ms, maybe even 50ms or
more if it was reliable and never changed more than 2–5ms at a time. But networks have
traffic, and lots of it, causing even the best connections to fluctuate, drop packets, lag, reset,
etc. We’re sensitive enough to feel a change of 5ms, so these latency variations are
disrupting, especially because they are impossible to predict.

I have seen some musicians playing duo videos, even with latency. I would guess they’re
not really playing written music and it looks to work best with a rhythmic player on one side
and someone soloing at the other. It seems to gel, but only until it’s time to play parts
together. Adding a third player is where it ultimately breaks down.

And for anyone considering that 5G connections are just around the corner — while these
can theoretically support consistent 1–5ms round-trip speeds, the networks are still going to
be affected by fluctuations caused by network traffic.

Even with the most ideal setup, assuming there is a direct fiber connection between two
hosts, can it work?

I’ve learned a lot since publishing the first version of this post. In one case, I learned about
https://lola.conts.it/. This seems to be the most capable setup to allow musicians to play over
distances. Unfortunately, it’s not a home-consumer product and requires very specific
hardware and a powerful 1GB clear-path connection between locations. The hardware helps
reduce latency, and the clear-path data connection helps prevent spikes due to network
traffic. The project has installations all over the world thanks to universities and research
labs and has enabled musicians to rehearse and in some cases perform.

Another promising option is JackTrip.

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/groups/soundwire/software/jacktrip/
It’s getting quite a bit of attention right now thanks to a mention by NPR and seems to work
best over shorter distances, 500 miles max.

According to mathematician & physicist Philippe Kahn, we still have one main challenge
that prevents musicians from being able to achieve a real-time experience: Einstein’s

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 Why can’t musicians jam with each other online without latency or other issues? | by Caleb Dolister | Medium

relativity theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. In addition to
mathematics, one of Philippe’s many passions is his life-long practice of classical and jazz
music.

“No matter how efficient the network & equipment, latency is unavoidable. Therefore the
problem of real-time remote music performance comes down to “What is the acceptable
latency?” My personal opinion is that a consistent 10ms is a minimum to serve all musical
styles. The less the better. But there is always going to be some latency. You can’t beat
Einstein and the laws of physics, except in science fiction books where we travel in time,
which is a lot of fun!”

The speed of light has about 5ms latency over a distance of 1500km. A network connection,
under perfect conditions, cannot go faster than this.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have perfect network connections. We’re stuck with
network traffic and trying to balance fluctuations from multiple musicians trying to connect
with varied latencies. Achieving a real-time feel online won’t work for music despite our
brain’s ability to learn how to compensate and predict.

That doesn’t mean we can’t hop online and have a little fun.

**This post is being revised as I gather feedback and continue researching latency and
music.**

Online Jamming Playing Music Online

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