Limited number of participants?

[Fran]

I’m so encouraged to know that at least one person has a quartet going. My playing friends are scattered about the Welsh marches and so far we’ve only had real success with  duets and trios. The only time we’ve succeeded with 4 is where a married couple have a dual connection to one computer. That’s a group with guitar, accordion, cello and recorder, although our usual groups are S, A, T and B recorders.

I’m interested in the distance aspect. I’ve played duets with a friend about 140 miles away with no problem but as I say my nearer friends get too much latency when we get 4 players together. I’m amazed to hear that 8 is possible. Is it just a matter of luck, good broadband speeds and the right equipment? I would say most of our equipment is pretty basic...what should we be getting to improve matters?

---

I have never heard of a connection that can support more than 8 in a session.

If 8 is the maximum that a connection can support - then the maximum in a session is 8, of course.

And ALL those 8 must have a connection that support 8.

Maybe some connections can support for example 16 or 32 - who knows?

But it will still require that all the other 15 or 31 also can do the same.

---

I have NEVER been in a session with more than 8 that actually sounded well - for more than a few seconds.

9 = unpleasant
10 = awful
11 = disguisting
12 = where is the leave button?
13 = I can not breathe
14 = tell them I love them
15 = ???

Hi. I am working with a chorus of around 35 people before COVID hit. We are trying to get as many people to use JamKazam simultaneously as possible. We have figured out that each additional PC that logs into a session adds about 325 Kilobit/second of data for both sending and receiving for everyone in the session. So if there are 10 participants, there will be about 3.25 MegaBits/second data sending and receiving for everyone. This makes it clear that it is important that everyone in the session has good high-bandwidth service from their internet service provider. This can be checked by each person by running an internet speed test with their browser. We use this one: https://www.speedtest.net/ . Here, pay attention to the UPLOAD Mbps result. This is typically the bottle neck in your internet connection. This has to be greater than the bandwidth generated by all the people in the session. If it is not greater, you are going to have a bad session!
Another useful thing we found is that there is an option in JamKazam to reduce the bandwidth of the audio data that is being sent out from a participant in the session. Click the "Manage" tab in the upper left corner, then click on "Audio Settings" and then "Audio Booster". In the window that pops up, you will see a setting called "Maximum Outgoing Music Bitrate". During an active session, this setting can be reduced to 128 Kbps. This greatly reduces the bandwidth sent out by the participant. We have had all our participants do this and it helps keeping the total bandwidth of the session down. It does not seem to greatly degrade the audio quality. So far, we have been able to have up to 13 participants in a session with good results. We are hoping to add more and see how it holds up. Good luck, Hans.

---

I’ve just seen the instructions given by the musician with 13 singers...well done! Will try all you advise re speed test etc. Thanks! Fran

---

Another often-missed consideration regarding your bandwidth and JamKazam performance:  Internet performance for a participant will be affected if others in the household are using the Internet connection at the same time.  For example: kids playing online video games, or streaming movies, etc.

Yes, some of my friends won’t join in because their partner/family wouldn’t be able to use the internet at the same time...frankly I think it’s a pity if they can’t find something else to do for an hour or so!  Fran