[linux-audio-user] Web-based collaborative band/musicians app?

[Sean Edwards]

I don't think the requirements are quite defined here
yet, and I see the term 'latency' taking on dual
meaning and creating some confusion.

Firs of all, what are we talking about with
collaboration?  Real-Time prcessing/recording, or the
assembly and editing of audio tracks in a shared
environment?

One of the biggest problems here is timing.  When
dealing with music, notes have values in relation to
beats and time, ie 4 beats per measure, etc.  In order
for everything to be synchronized, everyone must first
agree to the tempo (beats per minute).  There are
techniques to do this in a localized system, SMPTE, or
MIDI Clock, are two examples.  The challenge is to
achieve this synchronization, in real time, and
compensate for the distance latency.

The other latency problem is with sound generation. 
We all know the challenges of getting things
synchronized in our local machines, so this poses an
even greater challenge by adding the time latency
related physical distance.

The vision I came up with for such a system is a
combination of a file sharing (GNUTella, SAMBA, or
NFS?) and clustering (Beowolf).  Sharing the files and
sharing in the processing will get everybody involved
on the same page because time could be negotiated to
the machine with the greatest time latency.

I belive the pieces of the collaboration aspect exist;
people smarter than me need to identify the pieces and
assemble that puzzle.  

Because latency relates to both processing time and
physical distance, I do not see how this could happen
in real-time.  Again, somebody smarter than me would
have to solve this problem.


--- Paul Winkler <pw_lists at slinkp.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 01:53:52AM +0900, hard off
> wrote:
> > just out of interest, if you have 2 people on
> opposite sides of the globe both with broadband 
> connections....how much latency are you looking at
if
> you send (control) data by OSC ???
> > 
> > is internet-based jamming still science fiction?
> 
> Gaming might offer some interesting comparisons
> here.


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