Expand number of possible participants

[StuartR]

HI. I am using  JamKazam for a choir of size 30 people. We are currently able to have between 10-15 connections concurrently with good results.

Is there a way to expand that number? What is causing the limitation for the number of participants?

We figured out that the total network bandwidth consumed by JK does increase in a linear fa$on as the number of connections are added. And that the total bandwidth being used must not exceed the network bandwidth of any of the participants (particularly the upstream bandwidth which is typically much smaller than downstream bandwidth). We have had success by using the feature to limit maximum outgoing music bitrate to 128 kbps. 

Is it possible to reduce the outgoing music bitrate even further? For example, could we send only one channel of music microphone music data out from each participant, instead of doubling that data into both left and right channels (assuming that is happening now)? Possibly that channel could be copied into both left and right channels on the receiving side instead of the sending side? 

Is it possible to add a higher compression audio codec also to reduce bitrate, hopefully without adding too extra much latency or CPU usage? (I know this might be asking a lot...)

It looks like our PC's are not hitting the maximum CPU % usage most of the time (it probably sits below 50% for most participants). I am not sure what else might be limiting the participant count.

Any improvement on this front would be great since all the larger choruses around the world are currently on hold due to the COVID crisis.

Thanks,
Hans

You've certainly taken advantage of all that Jamkazam currently has to offer by getting 10-15 clients participating. Your limiting outgoing bitrate to 128 kbps for each participant is also a good idea. I think your best hope for support of additional session participants may lie in the new JK network acceleration feature that they hope to roll out in the near future. As I understand it (which could be wrong) is that each participant will connect to a geographically close central server rather than peer to peer as we do now. The music data from each participant will be gathered, combined and returned to each in ONE data stream. This should lower latency and bandwidth requirements somewhat, depending on your latency to the central server. Also the use of network accelerated routers could lower latency further. Were all waiting for this to come online to see how it might help. And help we all need because the Internet congestion is pretty bad for a lot of us, even in the same city!