How long until virtual band practices are possible?

NINJAM is in Reaper as ReaNINJAM

One would think so, but it's an incredibly hard problem. All the technology has been in place for a long time, but the showstopper is latency, and I don't see it improving any time soon. There's network congestion problems, which can be reduced with better protocols. Even if there was no congestion, there's the problem of information not traveling faster than about 2/3ds of the speed of light on a wire. In the US, coast to coast latency is about 100 ms, that's not including network congestion and any ADDA conversion latency. But there needs to be a round trip between all the members before anyone can hear anything, which doubles it. In addition, the band member with the worst latency would affect the total latency.

Ninjam is a very smart solution, and I think the only other solutions will be in the same vein.

I wouldn't wait for it. It won't happen unless the infrastructure of the internet changes radically in order to make latency insignificant. And even then, live jams might only be possible if the members are geographically close.

With that said, take a look at this Stanford-created thingy:

www.jacktrip.com/

The quoted latency of 25 ms assumes that the band members are within 500 miles of each other.

Here's a video: 

In my 30ish years of playing music, I’ve met an awful lot of amazing folks who have never lived anywhere near me, many of which I have only dreamt of being able to play with. And I have played with some great people who have had to move away for one reason or another to have the bands quickly dissolve.

Also, the idea that banter during song breaks would somehow suffer due to this is kinda ridiculous. If latency was good enough to actually play music together, how and why would conversation over that same connection be impossible?

I don’t think anyone would expect this tech to replace band practices, rather it would make more collaborations possible and I cannot see that as a bad thing.

I’d rather not be in a band but I also think remote recording sucks.

Yeah I think as time goes by and after dealing with the COVID shutdown more and more musicians are learning to work with latency as a fact of modern life. Is it ideal? Hell no, but with digital domination of recording, live and virtual it is what it is.

I spoke recently with a company that is in the middle of this online recording and rehearsing world. Actually, they are at the forefront of online recording technology. I spoke with them about this, and they reiterated that beyond 500 miles, technology isn’t there, and likely never will be. Inside 500 miles, it’s possible, depending on connection, speed, and other potential bottlenecks. But the reliability just isn’t there for rehearsing in real time via the Internet long distance.

So the longest XLR cable is only 500 miles?
Chris

Must have the right jeans. Not rehearsals but... My long distance recording experiences (All 2 of them )...
Were fantastic! But we'd at least WAV at each other.
Chris