Re: looping over the Internet - one day hopefully !

[buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)]

>Could latency be overcome in part by having everything run to some kind of
>Sync track, the way JamMan handles phrased loops; ultimately everyone 
>would
>be out of sync but by exactly 1/2/4 bars or whatever. If the latency is
>exactly the size of a repeated unit (a loop, 4 bars, whatever) the
>musicians will sound in time, though may not _be_ in 
>time.

This is pretty much how I picture it could work.  Basically,
everybody has a little software synthesizer playing a bunch
of loops, one per musician.  You update your loop, and it
gets transmitted to all the other musicians.  (Ok, before you
technical folk jump on me, for network bandwidth reasons, if
there's more than two of you, that synthesizer might actually
be a remote host--that is, do it client/server where I've just
described peer-to-peer.)

They hear the loop change properly, but delayed from when
you made the change.  Of course, it's not just "delayed";
because they make a change, and you hear THAT change
delayed, and a third party hears both your changes at the
_same_ time...

Here, let me give you an almost concrete description:

You only change your loop a few times, and we'll name
each varation "a" or "b" etc, so you play
 a a a b b c c c d d
and meanwhile we'll call his variations "1" or "2" etc...
 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5

But you don't hear the other guy's change for one loop,
you would hear:

  a a1 a1 b2 b2 c3 c3 c4 d4 d5 5

and he would hear

  1 a1 a2 a2 b3 b3 c4 c4 c5 d5 d

So if these were each a full loop long, and the changes
were gradual, the differences would probably not interfere
too much with your ability to cooperate.  The question is,
what version is the "definitive" take?  Everyone hears
things differently, and _nobody_ hears the obvious
"simultaneous" version a1 a1 a2 b2 b3 c3 c4 c4 d5 d5.

Sean Barrett