#jacktrip

Actually, I have found this audio-extension for low-latency audio drivers for over a year, but let’s talk about it here for the first time.

Jacktrip is an audio-extension software solution that allows itself to place itself on-top of the audio-source of any known chat-apps like Skype and Zoom, to be able to let musicians who live from a distance to be able to Jam in real-time.

Skype and Zoom in reality if you have a guy calling from L.A to talk to someone in New York, the direct line in communication if we could travel by the speed of light would be about 11ms. But the networks that we add to our communication will start to chip away on that smooth “direct” line. Anything we place on it will extend the latency.

First we have the computer/tablet, which then by itself will not be able to really punch up the audio-quality, so here we add the sound-card which would in reality be able to make the sound more direct if we record instruments into our computer. The attack from the moment we press down a key on a piano, the hammer swings and then hit the string, that process is about 11ms. We can reach that kind of result if we attach a midi-keyboard, the computer process the midi-signal, translate that into a note/velocity value and then play it back to us in the same amount of time. It’s still a lot of calculations being made in that small time-frame.

Now, if we would use the standard Skype or Zoom to broadcast this audio over the internet for the other person to hear and start jamming to, with all that gear between the computer and audio-interface we have now started to reach a latency online from 11ms to 113ms, which would affect the way we feel, interact with sloppy timing. The audio-communication programs only job is produce sound and video, but only to its basic needs. Talking fine, but jamming along, not so.

Enter: Jacktrip

The bi-directional audio plugin that you add on-top of your chat software to enact a high-resolution audio signal with about 10-15ms of latency, making it possible for musicians to finally practice and jam with other performers of the internet. In quarantine times, this open-source software was programmed by and developed by students at Stanford University and operates under the license by Paul Davis, Stephane Letz, Jack O'Quinn, Torben Hohn, Filipe Coelho and others.

A musicians dream to finally jam with others online, get your chops done and practice for the next summer tour. It is here, but you might need to do a little bit of typing in command line to get it to work. And if you’re software savvy, you’ll be able to improve on the code and extend its purpose.

So far I have seen 2 guys, a piano player and a drummer, both living about 3-4 miles away from each other, playing in sync to show the concept and proof of that this is really happening. Another video shows a jazz trio (Piano, Bass, drums) playing in sync as well.

If this ever become a fully paid software that would be easy to install to improve the abilities of audio inside Skype and Zoom I would buy it. But now it is even better. IT IS FREE. But some tinkering might be required.

Here are some examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEAwL3uQDKU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fVuBnm07ug