Wednesday Dec 9th 7-9pm EST - Problems Abound

[StuartR]

Just a heads up. Your mileage may vary.  I would be careful about making the generalization that JK is not ready for prime time. Your experience may not measure to everyone else.  I use JK 4 days a week mostly with the same folks. Things are very stable, no problems like you describe at all. Point being, what you experience does not speak for all. Secondly, while it’s a good idea to have the same session players using the same bit rate, do keep in mind frame rate actually has more to do with our own audio interface driver is talking to your audio interface hardware. However, if you are in the Red on your frame rate, it could yield distortion. My suggestion is, make sure all of your session attendees are using the same network settings > route > and one of the three options. My experience is, when EVERYONE in the session is on prefer lowest latency path, sound quality and stability is better. For what it’s worth, I have an 8 channel Interface and my regular Jamkazammers are all set to 192kp bit rate. The feedback with each other is nice and clear. I’ve been online since April and given the ups and down with the updates, some how we have been able to learn more about the app and an achieve a level of clarity in the session. Latency in April was difficult, but is now much better. Figure it out.

I also am on JK 4 days a week with the same 3 groups of people. Only things that change are the JK client and JK platform itself. I've been through every combination of every settings on the many dozens of updates since March. My groups strive to iron out settings and we've had many good sessions but also, especially in past several weeks, several bad ones.

Whenever there is a new release we all always reset all options to defaults. After all, a 'primetime' platform would know best what they intended for their clients, right? As of the last few releases Prefer Lowest Latency is one of the defaults. Audio bitrate and audio quality is subjective and elective. In fact, the new pay-for plans have higher bit rates as you move up the plan ladder. I am not sure what my current "plan" is but again I expect the JK client to prevent me from choosing a bitrate that my plan does not support.

I did notice the higher than usual CPU usage demands of the new client. I also notice that when JK goes south and I'm forced to leave and re-enter a session that the session list includes sessions that don't actually exist and show my session with players I know are not in that session and other "ghosts of sessions past" artifacts which makes me suspect some kind of caching/buffer problem on client or server.

Each of the people I play with also play in other group during the week and we recount via email when we had a good session and when we had a bad one. The latter has been quite prevalent over past couple of months. The late October and early November updates where debacles. Again, not the hallmark of a ready-for-primetime service. A later update seemed to have settled things down for a couple of week but this most recent update I fear is another disaster.

I have read the JK patent and have an idea what they are trying to do. No way for me to know which parts have been implemented. It would be good if, like a mature service, they could do A/B rollouts but I think that level of release control is past them. I doubt that few people would answer yes if you posed this question: "Do you think JamKazam carefully tests updates before general release?".

From a settings perspective: When the system is useless (as has been often lately) you and your session members might try to "uncheck" all the Network Path options and select only "Peer to peer". That may help you get through that session. Remember "Reset to defaults" beefore next session.

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Just a heads up. Your mileage may vary.  I would be careful about making the generalization that JK is not ready for prime time. Your experience may not measure to everyone else.  I use JK 4 days a week mostly with the same folks. Things are very stable, no problems like you describe at all. Point being, what you experience does not speak for all. Secondly, while it’s a good idea to have the same session players using the same bit rate, do keep in mind frame rate actually has more to do with our own audio interface driver is talking to your audio interface hardware. However, if you are in the Red on your frame rate, it could yield distortion. My suggestion is, make sure all of your session attendees are using the same network settings > route > and one of the three options. My experience is, when EVERYONE in the session is on prefer lowest latency path, sound quality and stability is better. For what it’s worth, I have an 8 channel Interface and my regular Jamkazammers are all set to 192kp bit rate. The feedback with each other is nice and clear. I’ve been online since April and given the ups and down with the updates, some how we have been able to learn more about the app and an achieve a level of clarity in the session. Latency in April was difficult, but is now much better. Figure it out.

I also am on JK 4 days a week with the same 3 groups of people. Only things that change are the JK client and JK platform itself. I've been through every combination of every settings on the many dozens of updates since March. My groups strive to iron out settings and we've had many good sessions but also, especially in past several weeks, several bad ones.

Whenever there is a new release we all always reset all options to defaults. After all, a 'primetime' platform would know best what they intended for their clients, right? As of the last few releases Prefer Lowest Latency is one of the defaults. Audio bitrate and audio quality is subjective and elective. In fact, the new pay-for plans have higher bit rates as you move up the plan ladder. I am not sure what my current "plan" is but again I expect the JK client to prevent me from choosing a bitrate that my plan does not support.

I did notice the higher than usual CPU usage demands of the new client. I also notice that when JK goes south and I'm forced to leave and re-enter a session that the session list includes sessions that don't actually exist and show my session with players I know are not in that session and other "ghosts of sessions past" artifacts which makes me suspect some kind of caching/buffer problem on client or server.

Each of the people I play with also play in other group during the week and we recount via email when we had a good session and when we had a bad one. The latter has been quite prevalent over past couple of months. The late October and early November updates where debacles. Again, not the hallmark of a ready-for-primetime service. A later update seemed to have settled things down for a couple of week but this most recent update I fear is another disaster.

I have read the JK patent and have an idea what they are trying to do. No way for me to know which parts have been implemented. It would be good if, like a mature service, they could do A/B rollouts but I think that level of release control is past them. I doubt that few people would answer yes if you posed this question: "Do you think JamKazam carefully tests updates before general release?".

From a settings perspective: When the system is useless (as has been often lately) you and your session members might try to "uncheck" all the Network Path options and select only "Peer to peer". That may help you get through that session. Remember "Reset to defaults" beefore next session.

Let me be clear about something: I have supported JK all year and attracted many of my friends to the platform. I contributed several times to JK's GoFundMe campaign. I try to help anyone with audio or  network or gear issues. I have spent tens of hours optimizing my own gear and tested every permutation of every setting. But when JK becomes a commercial pay-for platform (as it intends next month) then the service and the company must perform as such and I expect a stable experience each time I use the service. If JK incapable then it indeed deserves the "not ready for primetime" label.

I too have supported this platform all year and have moved my entire 6 piece band to it. Along with thei JK network changes that have caused session disruptions, there are some local network issues that continue to cause intermittent problems for a lot of us. The problem I'm referring to is the fact that most non-commercial home routers don't handle real-time data in a timely manner. This was discovered I believe by the gaming community who, like JK users, need low latency connectivity. It's been coined "bufferbloat" and despite the silly name is a very real issue for JK users who also rely on low-latency data flow.

It's been discussed here in the forum before and it needs to be given a close look by all of us that are using a home network with a lot of routine traffic, especially media streaming or file transfers.

Check your routers ability to handle timely data flow under load here:

dslreports.com/speedtest

If your router gets a low grade from the test and you're using JK during periods when your home network is otherwise busy with streaming/file transfers, you're probably going to have problems maintaining a low latency session.

What can you do about this problem?

Unburden your router when you're using JK; "suggest" that other users of your network find something non-network related to do (good luck?).

or

Replace your router with one that has better data handling. Unfortunately there aren't many in this category. One possible candidate is the IQRouter V3. It's a very affordable router using the OpenWRT operating system.

or

Enable your router QOS (if it supports it) to favor real-time traffic (gaming). Be aware, however, that QOS may not be properly implemented in some routers and, if enabled, could make matters worse.

or

Replace your router OS with the open source OpenWRT version which has several real-time data optimizations built in.