[microsound] realtime net audio platforms

[Michal Seta]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 7:35 AM, Justin Glenn Smith
<noisesmith at gmail.com> wrote:
> The jack audio connection kit (primarily Linux, but availible for Mac and
> Windows also) has the netjack backend, which can be used simultaneously with
> the regular sound-card based one. I have heard good things about low latency
> usage over ethernet, but I am not so sure about using over longer network
> distances.

Yes, but I have installed Jack2 on Mac and it told me that the IP
component was broken and was going to be available on Mac in the
future.  You could try to compile Jack1 and have access jack.udp,
though, but I have never tried any compilations on the Apple platform
(and it seems that it is not as straight forward as on Linux).

That said, I had fairly good results with jack.udp on a LAN
(seb-second latency).  I have not tried WAN but it would probably be
less optimal.  Note however that jack sends raw audio data, no
compression.  The problem with systems that use some sort of
compression is that there is encoding/decoding overhead which,
naturally, adds to the latency.

There is also SAT's (Society for Arts and Technology) Scenic (why do
they keep changing the name?)
http://scenic.sat.qc.ca/en/Scenic

It is a linux only (at least it was until recently) system for
high-bandwidth audio-visual communication.  I have attended the
performance of National Parks in which half of the band played in
Montreal and the other half some 5000 form here and they played
(mostly) in sync with high resolution audio and video.  But they had
big pipes (direct optical connection).  YYMV, and installation of the
thing is quite involved.

I am presently working (and researching) a possibility to jam over
WiFi, so if anyone has any ideas, I will grab them, otherwise I will
share some info if that becomes necessary (and I actually get it
working).

Cheers,

./MiS