Musicians Collaboration Studio
How To => Free Pluggins, Utilities and Cool Finds => Topic started by: atljam on January 22, 2008, 02:00:51 PM
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Hi all,
I just hooked up with ejamming.com and I believe it could be a great tool for us folks who are trying to collab. It would be great for "fleshing out" new ideas also.
Good internet connection and soundcard are all that is needed as they provide the interface.
I'm currently setup and ready to make noise, I did not have much success getting folks to play on my first try so it is small audience who seem to be online.
If anyone has tried this and if there are any takers who want to setup a session I would be interested. my profile is: dclancy
It would be best to go check it out and do a solo jam so you get to understand how it all works first.
Dan
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I saw the site but then forgot about it. From what I could tell it's a lot like NINJAM but you don't monitor locally you monitor from the server so everyone has the similar lag. Or so the docs say.
Have you tried to use it?
How well does it work?
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I only have done a solo Jam with it and was pretty impressed, they have reduced the latency and also have a new feature called Overdub which lets you hear your track pretty much in real time
also once you play a couple of tracks with someone you can click the Send song which exchanges a hi quality wav files of what the other played and so now you have no latency.
I'm curious to work with it, the thing that struck me when I set this up was it is fantastic opportunity to come as close as working live with someone and I like the collab site concept like Musicians Collab but the fluidity you could get coming together for a session and vibing that's priceless.
When I started collabing back in 1997 using a dial-up, Real player files it was horrible but it was still so cool that I could be atlanta and write a tune with someone in British Columbia CA
Now its really getting real we just got to tap the technology and as they say "we be jammin'.
Dan
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Wow I'll definately give it a try since I like to Jam when travelling
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My id is BassPlay3r
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thanks bassplayer, I don't know what your wknd is like maybe we can test the waters, do a simple blues jam just to see how the whole deal works
anybody else want to checkout this ejamming.com?
could be the start of something good and our collabs here will start to get some real dynamic benefit.
I know I probably re-record a bunch of times just about anything I do and use the comfort of my studio to make things right but I think the cool part here is that you don't have to do it right and you can always go back on your own time and fix issues. I see it more as creative meeting of minds.
my id on ejamming is: dclancy gonna try to be available sat/sun this weekend
Dan
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I have a practice on Sunday from 5-7. I still need to install it on my DAW system but that should be easy enough. Do you have IM? Most of mine are already listed. IM me and we will jamm.
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bassplayer -- the step son is heading out with the boyscouts this weekend so I may have some time sat morning if you are up to it -- I would love to try messing around with it
I will try to get it installed before then and post my id when I sign up
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I'm WFH today so later on today Iwill be installing it on my DAW. We also might want to try vstunnel because they now do collabing via a VST. http://www.vstunnel.com/en/0,35,00.html
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Well, lets see how the ejamming goes, I see the vsttunnel cost about 69 brit pounds and I would easily invest in that if I was sure it was very functional
I just love this technology stuff.
Dan
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I tried to do the ejamming thing last night and here is some hel[full tips
Have a mic hooked up so you can communicate easier
The limiting factor is upload speed.
One guy told me that 802.11g gives dropouts. Which is what I have on the box. Go wired or 802.11n
Go direct and use headphones to monitor your self via hardware monitoring .
Turn the local slider all the way down.
I'm going move my DSL into my office phone line and then try it again. It just doesn't work for me.
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So after hooking up my music system to Ethernet I was able to jam with people but there were times when it would get choppy and lose sync. most likely when the wife was surfing the net. I was jamming with boxy from Canada and for the most part it worked well.
I thing it would be a great aid in collaboration, especially with a mic since it's almost like yourt there. It was very easy for me to stop and say hey what was that chord you were playing there.
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Hi BP,
I tried it also this weekend, I guess we were on at different times, it also seemed like not really that many people were there maybe 4-6 at a time.
I played with 3 different people, 2 guitarist and 1 drummer.
each was a bit different and each learning experience.
I have ethernet so my speed was not an issue, a couple of things improve the experience, the use of the overdub button and pressing the REC on your one trk gives you a more in sync, less echo affect, on the drummer we worked until his mics were adjusted to get his volumes right, you tend to get a more dramatic sync issue but when I put the overdub/REC on his trk it was pretty decent.
Also we dumped our session and went from Distant Player to Better Audio and it was much better.
I use my Motif MLAN via firewire for all my audio inputs and so basically I can play songs off the Motif, drop in audio files, use mics, guitars the whole 9 yards so its pretty fantastic in that regards.
The lag issues are a bit hard to get used to, but each version that they put out they have made major improvements says the drummer I played with.
well I give it a 6 out 10 right now,
I wondering if something like SKYPE might work for just a one on one.
Anyway I'll keep checking it out.
Dan
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I hear the over dub thing was good also but never tried it.
The one thing I don't like is that it keeps changing my Presonus driver to 48K and then Sonar complains and I have to go reset it.
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I hear the over dub thing was good also but never tried it.
The one thing I don't like is that it keeps changing my Presonus driver to 48K and then Sonar complains and I have to go reset it.
Yeah, well for obvious reasons the 48k standard is necessary as bandwidth would be too much for Internet also 48 is the industry standard of sound cards. and yes each time I bounce between the two programs I have to change my MLAN sample rate and bit depth but hey its pretty amazing we are this far.
Dan
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Yeah, well for obvious reasons the 48k standard is necessary as bandwidth would be too much for Internet
huh? I was not able to parse that.
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the more the refinement of the audio signal the more data is required to represent that signal.
In sonar save a wave in 96 khz vs 48 khz and see the size double
so here we are transmitting data across the Internet so more data means more bandwidth more latency etc
and the common denominator factor of working with more sound cards, not everyone has a 96 khz sound device so the two things add up.
So they chose the path more chosen.
Dan
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I would assume that the would go with 44.1k to save BW instead of 48. I do notice my crappy on board sound card is 48khz so maybe theres some spec some where.
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New site: jamnow.com
Here's another cool find.
I have not "jammed" with anyone yet, it was a little harder to get my audio devices to work with their software but all is going good now.
Neat feature with this site is you can have audience hear what you are doing.
So I just started a Jam and turned on the Public broadcast, which is a way for others to hear what you are up to and maybe get in contact with you to explore more music.
Plus you can ck out others before joining in to see if its the kind of music you want to get into.
Back to ejamming.com, I got a fix for that issue of working with Sonar in 96 khz with my Yamaha MLAN sound device and then I use the LX6 audio device at 48khz. So I don't have to change rates any more just use the two different sound devices.
sorry too much yady ya,
Check out JAMNOW.com though, just another way to meet folks and make some noise.
Dan
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So your able to use Sonar with ejamming? I had problems using ejamming + Sonar + Jamstix. The drums sound like they were going through a ring modulator on the kick.
I get the same ring modulator effect but worse with JamNow and my Presonus Inspire FW interface. I've left support fourm messages and emailed support but it looks like the JamNow site is not that busy.
Jam now is purdy but it gets old starting sessions. From what I understand you have to run the local app then login and then that spawns a brows where you can click on the button to start your jam which somehow tells to local app to do it's thing.
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I have been putting a lot of time on those sites but not really making the headway I had hoped.
I put an old sound card back into my computer so I actually use two different audio devices.
Sonar and my guitar plugin from Native Instruments use my Motif XS MLAN which is firewire.
Ejamming and JamNow I use an Aardvark LX6 96khz interface that once I changed the buffer size from 512 samples to 256, they both worked perfect.
Have you tried using your internal audio device, you could port the analog into the onboard card, or go out an buy a Creative card x-fi its maybe $40-60 its listed on their site as one that works.
JamNow seems to be more of a launch site for people's music than anybody doing Live jamming, I have 3 songs I wrote and just started playing in sessions on JamNow under N2MUSIC userid. The quality can be pretty good working alone, but I don't hardly see many folks online and none of the ones that are ever want to jam. So I have not had a session with another jammer yet.
Ejamming.com I can't believe they have 11,000 users as I hardly see a handful online and rarely get someone to jam with. It has been borderline workable as the latency seems to be still pretty rough. keeping time is hard. Lots of beginners and I guess just people trying to get the thing work.
I downloaded the vstTunnel but have yet to try it out, seems like they do not give you a real shot at demoing it to its full capacity so I doubt that it is going to be worthy.
Well, the hope of doing some signifcant collabing using one of these sites gets dimmer each day.
Dan