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Yesterday, for the third week in a row, I had a successful band/rehearsal/session with the same group of people. Circumstances where thus, that we were able to play freely and at times even reach a tightness coming close to having actual 'pocket' (for the lack of a better word, I think most will understand)
Our situation; the group varies from 5 to 8 people & myself (I'm a stand-in, tech/coach) scattered over Netherlands. 80-140km apart.
Two peers with a MacBook Pro, the rest laptop/PC/W10. All with minimal tweaking. (but the obvious)
Focusrite, Behringer & Presonus external sound cards.
All with headphones and talkback / vocals via a sound card attached microphone - no speakers or onboard 'gear' involved.
All with a true public IPv4 address, no port forwarding (but myself) or tunneling.
One peer on fibre, the rest a mixture of cable (DOCSIS) & xDSL at multiple providers.
(All JKz gold accounts. All on 'Prefer P2P path')
Yesterdays 'pings' - comparable to prior occasions - as seen on my end (I'm the furthest away from all other peers)
'Best' = 11ms steady (to the person on fibre)
'Worst' = 22ms/fluctuating (to a person with a shared cable/DOCSIS) connection.
The rest sub 20ms.
This is, even for a drummer, a very enjoyable situation that holds up for an entire session with minor glitches.
Not looking to bloat, not trying to prove a point, not looking to start a 'yea nay', just reporting a positive sound 
It can be done. With a little perseverance and common sense.
D./
NB - "will it ever be the same?" (as 'live'?). Nope! But for these people, in strict medical quarantine, it is a very welcome positive break.
NB2 - We have actually been able to do this many times before, starting many months ago. But since there are reports of trouble with current installments, including "it used to work okay but it is not now" - I specifically wanted to report on our current situation.
It's good to share positive experiences. Achieving and experiencing a good session is possible. Myself, and the buddies i normally play with are in the same U.S west coast anywhere from 50 mi to 1000 mi apart and we are in always in the yellow. We occasionally play with some folks from 3 thousand miles away and of course there's some latency, but it seems the overall playing is better and enjoyable. We even had a drummer yesterday, something I'm hesitant about but its as if he was down the street. very minor latency. Overall, a very good time is had by all. Thanks, Dimitri for he positive spin. It's nice to know you're having a good time in addition to your efforts to help others have them by answering questions on the forum. peace
(02-22-2021, 01:56 PM)GDJ Wrote: It's good to share positive experiences. Achieving and experiencing a good session is possible. Myself, and the buddies i normally play with are in the same U.S west coast anywhere from 50 mi to 1000 mi apart and we are in always in the yellow. We occasionally play with some folks from 3 thousand miles away and of course there's some latency, but it seems the overall playing is better and enjoyable. We even had a drummer yesterday, something I'm hesitant about but its as if he was down the street. very minor latency. Overall, a very good time is had by all. Thanks, Dimitri for he positive spin. It's nice to know you're having a good time in addition to your efforts to help others have them by answering questions on the forum. peace And then there are some of us who can't get under 35 msec latencies when we're 12 miles apart! In our case we're using a mix of ISP's and there isn't a low-latency path between them.
I have been pleasantly surprised several times in the last month. 2 things have changed that I think are contributing factors.
1) I upgraded my computer and interface. The 9 year old Macbook Pro with a firewire interface had grown obsolete. New hardware is (usually) better.
2) Jamkazam upgraded software, network topology, and setup a support desk. It's been great since they made their changes.
Last year I was only able to jam with one person, living only a mile away. This year I've jamed with people from all over north America and some in western Europe!
Also, I've had great response from the JK helpdesk. This is the JamKazam that I had hoped for back in 2015!
My 2 cents, as a JK jazz drummer... Have had a mixed bag of sessions.
Tuesday evenings I have a session with 5 players, 4 of us local (drums, bass, guitar, vocals), sax player in Chicago (the rest of us in New Mexico). This session has always been excellent, even though the Chicago guy is always in the red.
Wednesday afternoons is a 3 player session, 2 local (me and the local bass player from Tuesday nights), keyboard in California. This session always suffers from latency issues with the Cali player, although the other local player says he doesn't have any problems.
Thursday evenings is a 3 player session, all local (drums, bass, guitar from Tuesday nights). This is the best session, like we're in the same room, locked in.
Every other Saturday is a 3 player session, me and 2 California players, including the one from the Wednesday sessions. This session is impossible to play in. Latency is in the high 40's to 50's.
Here's my observations...
> Latency is obviously dependent on gear, and "weakest link" effect definitely comes into play, especially with distant players. On the Saturday sessions both the California players have gear latency around 11; by the time we add in network latency over that distance, the session falls apart.
> Drummers suffer the most from latency effects, simply because everyone is trying lock into our time. If we try to lock into their time, everything slows down in a circle that eventually has us playing Cherokee at 40bpm. The only way this works at all is for the drummer to hold time, even when it's not in sync with the others. This can lead to me playing anywhere from a sixteenth to half a bar ahead of what I'm hearing from other players in the session... that makes it really hard to have an enjoyable session, and is one of the reasons I think many JK sessions are reluctant to let drummers in.
> Interestingly, my local bassist, running slightly higher latency than me (4.3 vs. 6.6) says he has no issues with the California keyboard, even though their combined latency is as high as mine, and I am constantly have to push the time through the latency, as described above. This confirms, for me, that the other musicians are able to work with whatever latency they have because they're not trying to hold the time, they're trying to lock onto my time. If I reverse this and try to lock onto the bass player, we slow down dramatically.
CONCLUSION: Overall, I grade out these sessions at an A-minus overall. The local sessions are terrific, very much as described by the OP, like we're in the same room, all locked in. As we add in distant players things begin to erode, primarily because of gear latency with the remote players, but also because of the inherent issues of playing drums in these sessions.
Two other observations...
1. Jazz ballads hold together better than up tempo swing tunes. I think this is because there's more room between the 2/4 on ballads, where we can accommodate some latency, and less on the up tempo stuff, where we have much less time between beats, so the latency can easily eat up that time.
2. Latin jazz tunes = nearly impossible without minimal latency, because of all the syncopation required between drums and bass. There's simply no room to be off, even slightly, without the rhythm turning into an incomprehensible mess. Last week we tried several times to get through an up tempo samba with the California keyboard, couldn't get past the 3rd bar before it fell apart.
(02-23-2021, 05:50 PM)jazzerone Wrote: My 2 cents, as a JK jazz drummer... Have had a mixed bag of sessions.
Tuesday evenings I have a session with 5 players, 4 of us local (drums, bass, guitar, vocals), sax player in Chicago (the rest of us in New Mexico). This session has always been excellent, even though the Chicago guy is always in the red.
Wednesday afternoons is a 3 player session, 2 local (me and the local bass player from Tuesday nights), keyboard in California. This session always suffers from latency issues with the Cali player, although the other local player says he doesn't have any problems.
Thursday evenings is a 3 player session, all local (drums, bass, guitar from Tuesday nights). This is the best session, like we're in the same room, locked in.
Every other Saturday is a 3 player session, me and 2 California players, including the one from the Wednesday sessions. This session is impossible to play in. Latency is in the high 40's to 50's.
Here's my observations...
> Latency is obviously dependent on gear, and "weakest link" effect definitely comes into play, especially with distant players. On the Saturday sessions both the California players have gear latency around 11; by the time we add in network latency over that distance, the session falls apart.
> Drummers suffer the most from latency effects, simply because everyone is trying lock into our time. If we try to lock into their time, everything slows down in a circle that eventually has us playing Cherokee at 40bpm. The only way this works at all is for the drummer to hold time, even when it's not in sync with the others. This can lead to me playing anywhere from a sixteenth to half a bar ahead of what I'm hearing from other players in the session... that makes it really hard to have an enjoyable session, and is one of the reasons I think many JK sessions are reluctant to let drummers in.
> Interestingly, my local bassist, running slightly higher latency than me (4.3 vs. 6.6) says he has no issues with the California keyboard, even though their combined latency is as high as mine, and I am constantly have to push the time through the latency, as described above. This confirms, for me, that the other musicians are able to work with whatever latency they have because they're not trying to hold the time, they're trying to lock onto my time. If I reverse this and try to lock onto the bass player, we slow down dramatically.
CONCLUSION: Overall, I grade out these sessions at an A-minus overall. The local sessions are terrific, very much as described by the OP, like we're in the same room, all locked in. As we add in distant players things begin to erode, primarily because of gear latency with the remote players, but also because of the inherent issues of playing drums in these sessions.
Two other observations...
1. Jazz ballads hold together better than up tempo swing tunes. I think this is because there's more room between the 2/4 on ballads, where we can accommodate some latency, and less on the up tempo stuff, where we have much less time between beats, so the latency can easily eat up that time.
2. Latin jazz tunes = nearly impossible without minimal latency, because of all the syncopation required between drums and bass. There's simply no room to be off, even slightly, without the rhythm turning into an incomprehensible mess. Last week we tried several times to get through an up tempo samba with the California keyboard, couldn't get past the 3rd bar before it fell apart. Excellent post... Thanks!
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