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Jamming at the Speed of Light
By Mike Kobrin
Published on WIRED Technology News, Jan, 31, 2007. Please visit WIRED Magazine online or pick up a copy from the store. Among the technology articles, they have incredible articles covering changes and new developments in the music industry and they are well worth reading.
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A new online service is about to launch that will allow bedroom musicians worldwide to play together in real time -- without leaving their own bedrooms.
In March, eJamming will introduce eJamming Audiio, an online music studio that uses peer-to-peer connections to eliminate lag times between live performers.
The software may have a big impact on learning how to play an instrument. Playing with other musicians in a live situation is critical to musical development, an idea that's undisputed among music educators.
"It's the interaction that's important, that opens you up," says Don Hahn, a former instructor at Columbia University and active trumpeter who's played with everyone from Buddy Rich and Maynard Ferguson to the Beach Boys. "You respond to each other, and you both come up with something new -- it actually broadens you. (It's) like talking to yourself as opposed to having an actual conversation."
EJamming is showing off the technology at this week's Demo 07 conference in Palm Desert, California. When eJamming Audiio debuts, the company will also launch a community website where musicians can meet up and schedule online jam sessions.
The current version of eJamming's software already supports MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) instruments. The new version will add support for acoustic instruments like horns, drums and vocals -- providing the closest thing to a live jam session that the laws of physics will allow, the company says.
EJamming co-founder Alan Jay Glueckman says the latency problem was tough to solve using digital instruments, and even harder using analog sounds.
"MIDI is small pieces of data which trigger sounds," he says. "With real audio, we had to create sound that was pleasing and acceptable to musicians and actually encouraged them to use it without having to shove huge amounts of data over the internet, which would create enormous latencies."
The software uses a peer-to-peer network to exchange audio signals between participants' computers. Eliminating a central server cuts latency in half.
But it's not only about lag times -- synchronizing the musicians with each other is also crucial.
"We delay your own sounds until the sounds of the other players arrive where they're supposed to be," says eJamming co-founder Gail Kantor. "You can naturally accommodate that delay the way you do when you play in a symphony orchestra."
In an orchestra, there is a roughly 1 millisecond-per-foot delay between, say, a flautist and a bassist, who can be seated up to 50 feet apart. Humans typically notice delays of 15 to 60 milliseconds, depending on the individual. That's one reason an orchestra needs a conductor to keep players in sync.
EJamming said its delay times will be roughly the same as an orchestra's -- and that the software will act as a conductor for the virtual band.
Users will need a broadband connection and a simple computer-based home recording setup. An audio interface like M-Audio's FireWire Solo, a microphone and a good pair of headphones should do the trick. Upload speed is critical to online collaboration, so a robust DSL or cable broadband package will allow musicians to collaborate with more players at greater distances.
One of eJamming's goals was to simplify the software's user interface. The software has a feel similar to Apple's GarageBand. Audio from online collaborations will be automatically recorded in a lossless format on each user's machine, and can be dragged and dropped into other audio applications.
The sound quality of the transmitted audio is impressive. (You can check out a sample online).
Online music collaboration has a checkered past. In the late 1990s, Rocket Network allowed musicians and producers to make changes to each others' prerecorded tracks within their favorite recording software.
Another company, Ninjam, tried to solve the latency problem by adding digital pauses to live performances. But musicians were measurably out of sync with their virtual band mates -- one measure, to be precise. It was a big step, but not quite up to the original dream.
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More About eJamming® AUDiiO
From eJamming.com
eJamming AUDiiO will now connect ALL musicians online in real-time, and more importantly, in sync. So whether you’re a vocalist or guitarist or bass player, or you play horns or strings or grand piano or the harmonica, you’ll be able to connect and play and record your work with other musicians, whether on MIDI or audio. If you’re a drummer, you’ll need to mic your kit or better yet, connect your MIDI drums to eJamming AUDiiO.
You’ll need at least a Pentium-3 PC with Windows XP/Service Pack 2 or a Mac running at minimum OSX.3.9 (Panther), and we support Tiger on both PowerPC and Intel processors as well - plus a microphone (USB or XLR), an audio interface like the M-Audio Firewire Solo, and a broadband connection (either DSL or Cable modem; minimum recommendation is 300 kilobits per second UPLOAD speed – check your download and upload speeds at www.speakeasy.net/speedtest ). The faster your Upload speed, the more musicians you can jam with over eJamming AUDiiO and the further away you can be.
If you’d like to participate in our Public Beta, send an email to AUDiiO-Beta@ejamming.com and they’ll let you know soon when you can sign up to start playing together with other musicians over eJamming AUDiiO’s Public Beta.
Watch the eJamming® AUDiiO Demo at DEMO-07: