Members JimAtLightspeed Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 Hello all; Not sure this is the right place to post this note, but looking thru the threads it seems that this section of the forums has a nice melting pot of ideas, music and technology being discussed, so hopefully I'm in the right place, if not then I guess a moderator will bump me in the right direction (was gonna put this in the classified section, but it didn't seem like this fit in anywhere specific, so.....hope this doesn't piss anybody off!) I work for a company called Lightspeed Audio Labs, and we're in Tinton Falls, NJ, which is right next to Red Bank, home of Kevin Smith (snoochy boochie!) and Jack's Music Store, amongst other things. Lightspeed has developed technology that enables musicians to play together over the web in real time, with real instruments. I know there are other sites out there that enable collaboration over the web between musicians, but our experience is unique. If you're a singer, drummer, guitarist, keyboard player, whatever, you can jam, unlike other midi based solutions. Anyway, we're doing pre-beta testing now, and we're looking for semi/professional musician testers to do paid sessions and try our stuff out here in Red Bank at our labs. Last Friday I was at Guitar Center picking up some stuff, and met a guy from Shamrock amps, who told me about Harmony Central, so this is my first post, and I'm hoping there are some players out there who have the skills to help us test our system. We think this a pretty great opportunity to help test something that will be a groundbreaking new way for musicians to play together and interact with their fans. Basic requirements are: 1) Over 18 years of age2) Drum, guitar, bass, keyboard players only please (for now)3) Must be semi/professional level musician, highly competent4) Computer literate - digital music workstation experience is a ++5) Sessions will take place in Lightspeed Audio's Tinton Falls/Red Bank NJ offices6) Musicians will be paid for sessions (the money is good, but hey -this isn't a union gig!) For more details, send an email to musicians@lightspeedaudiolabs.com or visit our website at http://www.lightspeedaudiolabs.com (thanks for the correction, John!) Any questions, fire away! Would love to hear your questions. Many thanks! Jim McDermottVP Business DevelopmentLightspeed Audio Labs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members John Sayers Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 That looks interesting Jim - I hope the mods here don't treat this as spam as it is the next step in internet communication for musicians. You may wish to edit your post as your link is incorrectly written. try this http://www.lightspeedaudiolabs.com cheersjohn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 Welcome, Jim! I almost hit the "spam delete" button but luckily, read through the whole thing This is indeed a very technically literate forum and other manufacturers have come here for similar reasons. Keep us posted on how it's progressing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JimAtLightspeed Posted January 29, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 thanks guys, i corrected the url - thanks for catching that! i have been singing for about 25 years, and i just joined the company back in december. i've actually been testing the system with the guys here, singing, and it really is a rush to hear somebody in another city, playing with you in really high sound quality, to the point where you just forget about the interface and perform together. you can read the bios of the people involved on our website, and there are some serious professionals here. making online musical collaboration work is very difficult because of latency and sound quality issues, but we've got very interesting technology to deal with these challenges. the public beta is scheduled for the spring, but we're doing pre-beta now, so please spread the word to anyone who is in NJ and wants to check it out. thanks again guys Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members boosh Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 So what's the latency? I guess that's the question we all want to know,...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 So... I'm perversely intrigued... Please don't give away any proprietary/secret info, here, but... I just gotta ask: So... if I catch your drift, I could play guitar here in So Cali and my pal in Maine could jam lead over it and I could hear him -- in real time? (As opposed to a few moments later?) I'm not sure how that could be possible... EVEN if we had a STRAIGHT WIRE analog system, the delays would be musically significant... By my calculations it would take a leisurely 18 ms for my signal to reach HIM and ANOTHER 18 ms for his signal to reach me... that means I'm hearing him 36 ms AFTER I've played what he's responding to. (Figuring 3000 miles to Maine; electricity travels about 90% the speed of light, so that's 167,400 miles per second, giving a straight wire analog signal time of .0179 second.) And THAT's with a straight wire -- no digital conversion and conversion buffers, no transmission buffers for transport acorss the country. And if we're talking about ovr the web then you've got cans of worms inside cans of worms... as anyone whose done much pathpinging knows, transmission times can be all over the map. I'm thinking your definition of "real time" playing must be substantially different than what it conjures in my mind. I'll go check out your company's website._____________ I'm back. I don't get it. It sure SOUNDS like you all are talking about realtime musical interactivity as opposed to loop delayed or whatever... I'm sorry, unless someone has repealed the laws of physics here, those "low latencies" your site claims are not going to be anything close to what I consider low latency. Seems like it would be more like trying to jam with someone on the other side of a football stadium. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members boosh Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 That's exactly how I feel,....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members boosh Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 Even traveling at the speed of light it will take 1/50th of a second to cover the distance New York/Amsterdam add the conversion of the input and output of the sound,......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 I just pinged the State of Maine (I'm determined to set up a jam with the cool cats at the state Chamber of Commerce) and the average time was 88 ms... (87-89, 4 passes) Clearly we're not talking about what I think we're talking about when we're talking about realtime, here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members boosh Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 I think our drummer would love it though,.. he allways is one beat behind,... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 I think our drummer would love it though,.. he allways is one beat behind,... Heh. Now, if you were looping with a fixed time beat you could work out a deal where people added their part and then it showed up next time around, properly time corrected... It would probably come fairly natural to those of us who've worked with echo loops. But that's a different thing and I think you need the fixed periodicity. (Or is that phrase redundant? Update: yes, yes it is. ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JimAtLightspeed Posted January 29, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 latency is always the first question that gets asked, and while I cannot get into a detailed discussion about how we deal with that while we're in pre-beta, i will say that we have done deep thinking on this and have some very robust ways of dealing with it, that will be revealed as we get closer to our public beta. but i will say that, as someone who has actually used the technology to perform, that it is highly useable, moreso that what else we've seen out there. we've had some serious professional musicians testing it, we're spreading the net a bit wider now, and as I mentioned, we'd really like some beta testers out here in New Jersey. i am very excited about sharing more details with you guys as we get closer to public beta. Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JimAtLightspeed Posted January 29, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 I just pinged the State of Maine (I'm determined to set up a jam with the cool cats at the state Chamber of Commerce) and the average time was 89 ms...Clearly we're not talking about what I think we're talking about when we're talking about realtime, here. curious, where are you pinging maine from? i can tell you that we would not be in business if the experience was "jamming together in a football stadium". guess we'll have to get you into the public beta, Blue! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 Southern California. I just pinged the Vermont CofC and got an average of 100 ms. But, like I said, even in a straight wire analog system (ie, w/ no conversion and no buffering), the roundtrip for a 3000 mile trip would be 36 ms. So, I can't help but feel the term "realtime" is, shall we say, confusing. But I realize you don't have a shipping product and don't want to give away the details on how your collaboration system works, so I'm not gonna press that, here. But you should probably put an asterisk next to that "realtime" in your heads and make sure you address the issue of how to talk about what your doing accurately before you actually go to market. Good luck to you, anyhow. I think the idea of near-realtime collaboration is a great one, even if people will never be able to truly musically interact in realtime in the conventional sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted January 29, 2007 Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 curious, where are you pinging maine from?i can tell you that we would not be in business if the experience was "jamming together in a football stadium". guess we'll have to get you into the public beta, Blue! You bet. As someone who used to participate in online "open mics" (and now I can't even recall the name of the service we used! It was a CB-style chat thing and it actually worked pretty cool but the fidelity was pretty much carp) I'm all for interesting applications of technology. BTW, those online open mics were tremendous fun. I just wish the anti-noise/data-compression technology in Skype didn't mangle music so bad (I used their testing thing to record a half minute of guitar... you could KIND of tell it was suppsoed to be guitar). So, really, I'm ripe for SOMETHING like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JimAtLightspeed Posted January 29, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 29, 2007 Good luck to you, anyhow. I think the idea of near-realtime collaboration is a great one, even if people will never be able to truly interact in realtime in the conventional sense. Well, as I said, I've played live over the web with our stuff myself, so I can't really agree with the word "never". I will absolutely agree with you that if you want 100% truly "real-time", you basically need to have your ear at a guitar neck, because by the time the sound comes out of the amp, it technically isn't "real time". How narrow a definition of "real time" do we want to get? That's the question. If you are onstage at Madison Square Garden, and each musician is on either side of the stage, that certainly isn't real time. What is coming thru the monitors has measurable delay also. But you adapt, within a certain window of delay, in any performance situation. You might not even have decent monitor levels in some venues, or a really noisy PA, or people throwing beer bottles at you, but you adapt Perfection is difficult to achieve because of the physical rules of nature, so what we're really talking about is how close you can get to that ideal, and minimalize latency, while also having good sound quality. And do this without requiring someone to spend thousands of dollars, have special connectivity, or be a studio owner to use it. Of course, if you want perfection, you could always fly to Maine and jam! I certainly understand the doubts, and these are all good questions. I'll keep you guys posted as this develops, and please, we need NJ testers, we're paying, and then you can get inside Willy Wonka's factory and see how the Gobstoppers taste yourself! Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members boosh Posted January 30, 2007 Members Share Posted January 30, 2007 How come that if you're testing stuff like that you need NJ testers,...wouldn't it be better to hook up to me and test? I'm in Amsterdam about 6000kms away... That would be a real challenge,... a 6ms delay here on my PC makes me very nervous and I can't play with that 4ms I can deal with. Are you saying that you can achieve that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted January 30, 2007 Members Share Posted January 30, 2007 You know, if I could pick a developer name, I think that it might be Dr. Schuyler Quackenbush. ...but not to be too much of a wiseass, the bios are pretty good. Dr. Quackenbush is chair of the MPEG Audio subgroup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JimAtLightspeed Posted January 30, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 30, 2007 You know, if I could pick a developer name, I think that it might be Dr. Schuyler Quackenbush. Schuyler is currently the Chair of the MPEG Audio subgroup, so yep, it's great to have him on board, he knows a thing or two about audio Regarding Europe, we'll get there eventually, our initial goals are doing a great job in the US, then Canada. So as much as I love Amsterdam (I'd love to get Robin Nolan on our system for instance), it's going to be a little bit before we're there. Thanks for the comments all! Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members franknputer Posted January 30, 2007 Members Share Posted January 30, 2007 I'd be very interested to hear/see/try what you guys are up to. I'm still looking for a good way to collaborate on-line. I still have the same questions about latency, and I'm quite interested in what your approach is. I would suspect perhaps a P2P approach, rather than some of the server-based approaches like others have done? (You don't have to tell all, I'm just speculating. ) If I could get to Jersey I'd be all over this. Do you have a projection for a public beta yet? I hope you'll check back when that time comes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JimAtLightspeed Posted January 30, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 30, 2007 I'd be very interested to hear/see/try what you guys are up to. I'm still looking for a good way to collaborate on-line. I still have the same questions about latency, and I'm quite interested in what your approach is. I would suspect perhaps a P2P approach, rather than some of the server-based approaches like others have done? (You don't have to tell all, I'm just speculating. ) If I could get to Jersey I'd be all over this. Do you have a projection for a public beta yet? I hope you'll check back when that time comes. Frank; Send us your info at musicians@lightspeedaudiolabs.com If you have a myspace page, website, and/or bio, that would be very helpful. Ideally, we'd really like to hear all the musicians beforehand. But send us your info, we may be able to squeeze you in sooner than later! Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted January 30, 2007 Members Share Posted January 30, 2007 Of course, if you want perfection, you could always fly to Maine and jam! This guy's funny. _~ I say try using a little mind over matter and stop whining about the laws of physics. _~ Sorry, Jim. These guy's are a cynical bunch. _~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JimAtLightspeed Posted January 30, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 30, 2007 _~ Sorry, Jim. These guy's are a cynical bunch. _~ Hey, I understand the skepticism, it's very easy to get hung up with numbers until you have an experience to play with. Soon, soon! Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members boosh Posted January 30, 2007 Members Share Posted January 30, 2007 Hey, I understand the skepticism, it's very easy to get hung up with numbers until you have an experience to play with. Soon, soon! Jim The numbers is all we have because everyone that promissed technology like that a while ago is now selling Woppers at Burger King. Like you said,...it allready won't work for us Europeans so to me it don't matter anymore but I know there's lots of U.S. folk that's really interested,...but they got dissapointed to often. Robin Nolan ,..........Gypsy Jazz,....now we're talking Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members boosh Posted January 30, 2007 Members Share Posted January 30, 2007 How narrow a definition of "real time" do we want to get? That's the question.Jim Under 2ms with at least CD quality audio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.