Latency in the UK?

[bassyerbouti]

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if anyone in the UK is getting a good experience jamming with other UK musicians?

I discovered JamKazam about 6 months ago but found it impossible to jam with others in my band as the latency was getting in the way.

Two of us tried again tonight but latency is still an issue for us, we just can't lock onto the beat. I was wondering if we are just too far away from wherever the servers are located or if there are any tips for improving things please?

I believe we meet all the minimum system requirements. I have fibre connection and get 110mbps download and 4mbps upload. My guitarist has copper connection and gets 65mbps download and 16 mpbs upload. Both with Ethernet connection, both using PreSonus external sound cards. One guitar and one mic each.

Before we start doing anything the latency traffic lights are amber. Voice is crystal clear as we chat to each other before playing but once we both start playing things start to crackle and pop and before long we are out of sync with each others playing.

Thanks for any assistance or suggestions.

regards,

Chris (UK, London)

[Dimitri Muskens]

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if anyone in the UK is getting a good experience jamming with other UK musicians?

I discovered JamKazam about 6 months ago but found it impossible to jam with others in my band as the latency was getting in the way.

Two of us tried again tonight but latency is still an issue for us, we just can't lock onto the beat. I was wondering if we are just too far away from wherever the servers are located or if there are any tips for improving things please?

I believe we meet all the minimum system requirements. I have fibre connection and get 110mbps download and 4mbps upload. My guitarist has copper connection and gets 65mbps download and 16 mpbs upload. Both with Ethernet connection, both using PreSonus external sound cards. One guitar and one mic each.

Before we start doing anything the latency traffic lights are amber. Voice is crystal clear as we chat to each other before playing but once we both start playing things start to crackle and pop and before long we are out of sync with each others playing.

Thanks for any assistance or suggestions.

regards,

Chris (UK, London)

>>>
There is no 'central server' as such to handle your sessions. Jamkazam establishes a peer-to-peer (P2P) connection between jammers. So, if latency is an issue you'll have to have a good look at both your equipment and your LAN/WAN connections.
4mbps up is rather low but should suffice with only the two of you.
What are your local latencies (gear)? And what are your individual internet latencies? You can see those numbers by hovering over the coloured dot behind your peers name when in a session.

[bassyerbouti]

Thanks for taking an interest Dimitri and explaining about P2P. I just ran a test with the two guitarists in the band separately.

I ran two separate sessions.

In both cases I am seeing audio latency of 11ms for me and internet latency of 11-21ms for me - I have an old presonus firebox connected via firewire to an old imac

with guitarist one (using a new presonus) he was getting audio latency 2ms and internet latency 15ms. His download speed is 65mps and upload 16mbps.

with guitarist two ( using scarlet212) he was getting audio latency 11ms and internet latency 16ms. His download speed is 32mps and upload 6mbps.

is there anything we can tweak do you think or is it our old creaking kit and infrastructure hampering us?

regards,

Chris

[Dimitri Muskens]

Thanks for taking an interest Dimitri and explaining about P2P. I just ran a test with the two guitarists in the band separately.

I ran two separate sessions.

In both cases I am seeing audio latency of 11ms for me and internet latency of 11-21ms for me - I have an old presonus firebox connected via firewire to an old imac

with guitarist one (using a new presonus) he was getting audio latency 2ms and internet latency 15ms. His download speed is 65mps and upload 16mbps.

with guitarist two ( using scarlet212) he was getting audio latency 11ms and internet latency 16ms. His download speed is 32mps and upload 6mbps.

is there anything we can tweak do you think or is it our old creaking kit and infrastructure hampering us?

regards,

Chris

>>>
Your connection with "guitarist one" is golden. Don't worry about that one. Anything sub 20ms is very playable - even for drummers ... .
The gear latency for "guitarist two" could (and should) be better. There's a lot of info on howto achieve maximum result with a 2i2 on this forum.
Did you try the 'tweaks' in JKZ with e.g. the frame size in 'audiobooster+'?

I'm not familiar with the presonus firewire/MAC combo but do look in the ai compatibility list thread. Several tips are given on many diff ai's. Maybe there's a dedicated driver for MAC?

Your (and their) internet latency could be hampered by *anything* happening on your connections while trying to jam. So, any WiFi (phones/pads), game consoles, smart tv's, family members on e.g. netflix can/will give 'noise' = jitter = latency on your connection.

D./

[SteveW]

I'm also in the UK and play with a 3-piece band (with an occasional 4th joining us). We're all using fibre-to-the-cabinet broadband, of which mine is the worst with about 35Mbit/s download and barely 3Mbit/s upload. My problem is I've got aluminium cable between home and the cabinet (a lot of it was used 40 or 50 years ago when the cable was installed) and OpenReach have no plans to replace it in the near future, unless it fails completely--you don't happen to know anyone with a JCB do you? Two of us are using Focusrite Scarlett with Macs and the third is using Behringer with Windows. We are generally seeing total latency between participants of around 20-23ms, which seems to be just about OK for playing together. In recordings it is noticeably that we tend to start off a bit off sync but get better during the session as our ears/brains compensate for the slight lag between playing the instrument and hearing the sound in the headphones.

Your guitarist with the Focusrite ought to be able to improve on 11ms latency. If using a PC, make sure they are using the right ASIO driver--if a Mac, there is a low-latency sytem extension that needs to be installed.

We use 48kHz sampling rate for all the interfaces and the lowest frame size that our computers/interfaces will stand without losing packets. The Focusrites are fine at 1ms frame size. We set the audio bitrate to the lowest setting. The difference is barely audible to me and it is much kinder to the person with the lowest broadband speed.

It is definitely worth persevering with tuning the various technical parameters (sample rate, frame size, bitrate, etc), although it is a bit of a faff.

Good luck and best wishes

Steve

[bassyerbouti]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for all that info. Really glad it is working for your band. I am lucky to have fibre broadband hear. Virgin inherited the original NTL cable many years ago. We were on copper wires with BT for a while but it was really unreliable so we switched.

I went looking for the sampling rate adjustment on my interface box and hit a brick wall as the kit is no longer supported and can get no help from presonus. I looked into getting a new interface but hit another brick wall as my Mac is 10 years old and doesn't meet minimum requirements for new interfaces.

So while our two guitarists can noodle on their newer kit they will have to be without bass for a while until I bite the bullet and upgrade all my kit (ouch!) Or until lockdown restrictions are eased and we can rehearse at my place.

Thanks once again,

Chris

[Dimitri Muskens]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for all that info. Really glad it is working for your band. I am lucky to have fibre broadband hear. Virgin inherited the original NTL cable many years ago. We were on copper wires with BT for a while but it was really unreliable so we switched.

I went looking for the sampling rate adjustment on my interface box and hit a brick wall as the kit is no longer supported and can get no help from presonus. I looked into getting a new interface but hit another brick wall as my Mac is 10 years old and doesn't meet minimum requirements for new interfaces.

So while our two guitarists can noodle on their newer kit they will have to be without bass for a while until I bite the bullet and upgrade all my kit (ouch!) Or until lockdown restrictions are eased and we can rehearse at my place.

Thanks once again,

Chris

>>>
What's the model # on your Presonus? Did you go on the forum for info/help?
We could get online together and see what's possible.
Seeing +20ms on your inet connection alone (before adding gear latency) is worrisome though.
Let me know what you want to do. (PM?)
D./

[Terri 716]

Hi Chris,
I'd like to make contact and know how you got on. I'm also in Dorset, UK. Haven't jammed with anyone yet (jazz). I'm on JK free version but don't want to upgrade until I know it works. I have Roland keyboard and Presonus Studio 24C. BT ethernet connection. JK green/yellow - so I 'should' be ok. Hope to hear from you.