Realtime online jamming

[ignotus]

Hi folks,

Here's a piece of software for realtime, online jamming that I think not many people know about. It's open source and available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

http://llcon.sourceforge.net/

I've tried it out and jammed with people almost 1000 km away (I'm in northern Spain and the other guys were in northern France and Germany). Yes, there was some latency, but quite bearable, and the closer you are to the others (and provided you have a decent Internet connection), the lower the latency. And it's very fun. You can arrange a session with people you know (who also need to install the software) or you can hang out and see if anyone else is available - I was lucky to stumble on a couple of guys, but it's better to arrange a session because there aren't often people there.

Edrums are perfect for this kind of thing as opposed to an acoustic set because you don't have to set up mics and stuff connected to your computer. It does require you to set up your audio drivers, buffers etc. so as to minimise latency, but I reckon many folks here, particularly those who use VSTs, are well versed in that and shouldn't find it too hard.

Here's a paper that the author has written about the software:

http://llcon.sourceforge.net/PerformingBandRehearsalsontheInternetWithJamulus.pdf

It explains what it does and a bit about how it works, among other things.

If anyone wants to give it a go and runs into any difficulties I can try to help to set it up. Once you set it up the first time, after that it's just a couple of clicks to get it running.