Hey Kemitime, I'm trying to solve this problem at the moment. I'm looking to have a couple of people leading the singing, with others following on from where they are, with their mics down.
Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
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Re: Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
#12Unfortunately that will be really tough. I have a live audio background and the recommendation I have always heard is to keep the latency of your signal path at the 1 ms level when dealing with monitoring applications. That's a solid order of magnitude below what is common for VOIP let alone video. You could maybe get away with audio only, but round trip latency is still getting up there. Edit: I know of some pro-gra…
Thanks for the pro-level reference. I'll keep this in mind in case we ever get into recording. For now we're just trying to get non-singers/total beginners to sing together without fear of embarrassment.
Re: Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
#13Unfortunately that will be really tough. I have a live audio background and the recommendation I have always heard is to keep the latency of your signal path at the 1 ms level when dealing with monitoring applications. That's a solid order of magnitude below what is common for VOIP let alone video. You could maybe get away with audio only, but round trip latency is still getting up there. Edit: I know of some pro-gra…
Have you any experience with http://cleanfeed.net/ or https://ipdtl.com/ or squadcast.fm? I'm assuming they are good for interviews because you can correctly merge the separate audio tracks later, rather than because they keep the latency down?
I'm not familiar with any of these but I'm going to check them out. Thank you!
Re: Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
#14One way is achieving low latency, which is technically super hard, as others point out. Keep in mind that another way is selecting less latency sensitive music, "slower" music with longer held tones. But that's a style change.
Wow this is an interesting comment. I hadn't considered changing the music in this way. I'll give it a try. Thank you!
Re: Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
#15Discord has <200ms latency for audio chat. Is that sufficient? Not Enterprise ready but it may not matter for your use case.
Discord will be what I use in my next attempt with a test group. And I don't know if it will work but I'll try it along with the other suggestions (slower, longer tone music and perhaps some lead singers turned up more). Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
#16If you can get by with audio only I'd recommend Mumble with a strategically placed location of the server (to keep latency consistent between users assuming no routing shenanigans, need to test for this) and hope for the best.
I'll give Mumble a try. Thank you!
Re: Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
#17you really need to be The best solution is JamKazam https://www.jamkazam.com/ (I have no affiliation and have not used the product in years) You'll each need a good interface and Ethernet connections. A good interface on windows would typically have an ASIO driver. This is not an easy thing for more then a few people. Note: Jamkazam also makes an all-in-one device (JAMBLASTER).
This looks really cool. I have a feeling that most of our participants won't be able to set up ethernet-based connections and use special hardware. Worth more investigation on my end before I assume too much. Thank you!
Re: Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
#18Hey Kemitime, I'm trying to solve this problem at the moment. I'm looking to have a couple of people leading the singing, with others following on from where they are, with their mics down.
Fascinating. This feels compatible with our setup -- where the group leaders are in the same physical location with one mic and the participants are all remote. I'm going to test this idea out soon. Thank you!
Re: Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
#19What about Whereby?
Oh right, this is the new appear.in. I remember really liking how easy it is to join rooms. Going to give this another look. Thank you!
Re: Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing?
#20Semi off-topic, but the development of solution for this problem is a minor plot thread in "Rainbow's End" by Verner Vinge, which was a fairly popular sci-fi book with some really cool "near-future" predictions.