Why do so few people jam online? Do you know dedicated software exists at all?

  • The past year I've been using software like Jamkazam and Jamulus to jam online. It's great fun and works really well provided you have your hardware and software setup correctly and the people in your room have so as well.

    While there certainly were quite some new users due to the Covid lockdown, it still is relatively empty. Anywhere from 2 to 10 rooms on busy evenings. Of which most are labeled "pop and country". Rarely any rock and metal unfortunately. But of course you can start your own at any time.

    I guess I'm on a mission to get more people online.


    Jamulus is free and the more sophisticated Jamkazam is free to try out for a few hours. But I'm happily paying 10 dollars a month for unlimted access. The devs are really working hard to improve the software all the time.


    So I'm wondering if people have heard of it at all. What's holding you back from trying it?
    Let me know if you have any questions.



    Edit march 18:

    I will help everyone as much as I can. I started this post without any links. Let alone anything that would make me money.
    I'm not kidding you, 2 days after starting this post I got an email that Jamkazam started an affiliate program.
    Now today it seems this post is getting more attention so I hope I'm free to post my affiliate link here for those who are interested in using Jamkazam.

    I will also post the direct link if you don't want to use my code. No problem of course!


    With affiliate code: https://www.jamkazam.com/landi…al/signup?affiliate=11118
    Without: https://www.jamkazam.com
    Jamulus without any affiliate code: https://www.jamulus.io


    I will read all the new posts tomorrow and help everyone as much as I can. Not for the money but because I'd love to get this more widely known, so we can all jam together!

  • Damn I was always under the impression this type of software just has too much latency. Does it actually work well? Like you can jam or rehearse without any hiccups? How do the drums participate?

  • Damn I was always under the impression this type of software just has too much latency. Does it actually work well? Like you can jam or rehearse without any hiccups? How do the drums participate?

    Latency is indeed the biggest deal breaker. But it doesn't need to be. It depends on your hardware, software and distance to the other players. Jamulus and Jamkazam do a good job reducing the latency as much as possible.

    But yes, you can play perfectly fine with other people. I even jam with people across the ocean.
    Key is to always monitor through the software. So you hear yourself after you went through the server and back. And not monitor locally.

    The best start is a low latency setup (audio interface).


    I have an e-drum connected and depending on the room I can use it without any problems. It's really awesome. Same with guitar and vocals.


    It gets technical quite quickly though so I have to admit it might take some setting up. And if you have a low latency audio interface you're off to a bad start.

  • Latency is indeed the biggest deal breaker. But it doesn't need to be. It depends on your hardware, software and distance to the other players. Jamulus and Jamkazam do a good job reducing the latency as much as possible.

    But yes, you can play perfectly fine with other people. I even jam with people across the ocean.
    Key is to always monitor through the software. So you hear yourself after you went through the server and back. And not monitor locally.

    The best start is a low latency setup (audio interface).


    I have an e-drum connected and depending on the room I can use it without any problems. It's really awesome. Same with guitar and vocals.


    It gets technical quite quickly though so I have to admit it might take some setting up. And if you have a low latency audio interface you're off to a bad start.

    What would be a low latency audio interface?

  • What would be a low latency audio interface?

    Well, first of all, you could buy the lowest latency interface possible, but if you're using a real old laptop that can't handle a low buffer then it would be a waste of money.

    Assuming you have decent hardware then you should look for an audio interface that can handle low numbers without crapping out. They all advertise low latency but in reality as soon as you go below a 128 buffer size your audio driver will stop. Or you get pops and clicks.


    Gearslutz has a huge thread going regarding this subject. The problem often is that a stable low latency interface is...more expensive.

    Personally I'd say you want to start with an interface that can handle 6 ms or less while stable.


    The reason why I bought my Presonus 2626 is because it does just that. I can reduce my latency to less than 3 ms roundtrip to my computer. Even lower with not too many plugins running. This is a great start if you're going to play online. But you're looking at a 600 dollar interface.

    I also have an Apollo X4. Amazing interace and perfect for monitoring directly. But way too much latency when going online. So in this case a really expensive interface is not always the solution.


    Now there certainly are cheaper options. But again, usually this comes with more latency.

    But don't worry, you can play online fine even with a cheap Behringer interface. I think you're looking at 6 to 10 ms round trip locally. Then you have add the latency to the server and back where you will jam.

    And I can't give any numbers there. Sometimes it's 10ms, sometimes 100. 100 of course being unusable.

    In total, to the server and back you want to stay around 20 ms but honestly, I've played with people many times with much more latency and it was still fine.
    It actually cured my latency OCD. I always was low latency obsessed. I mean, I still am but I found out things aren't as bad as the internet makes you believe haha.


    A cheapish audio interface that does amazing low latency numbers while staying stable is the Zoom UAC-2 by the way.

    But again, many people are jamming happily online with cheap audio interfaces. Make sure they have an ASIO driver.


    Latency is a difficult subject in this case. It depends on many factors. And figuring it out all can be a bitch.

  • I have a brand new powerful PC hardwired to my internet so the hard ware should be fine there. Usually i just plug my kemper to my computer via ethernet and play, but I do have a Line 6 Toneport UX2 for my laptop. Will that have too much latency? Im assuming I can't just plug the kemper to the PC and forego a DAW interface right?

  • I have a brand new powerful PC hardwired to my internet so the hard ware should be fine there. Usually i just plug my kemper to my computer via ethernet and play, but I do have a Line 6 Toneport UX2 for my laptop. Will that have too much latency? Im assuming I can't just plug the kemper to the PC and forego a DAW interface right?

    Your PC should be fine then. I have no idea how the Kemper through ethernet works. If this is low latency and software like Jamkazam sees it as an input channel you could be fine. Can't help you with that.
    In general it's recommended to use an audio interface that can run on an Asio driver.
    Many cheap audio interfaces can run Asio and have below 10 ms latency. You're going to have to look up the specs of that Line 6 UX2.

  • I didn't even know this was a thing. I currently have my work computer equipment setup on my recording desk. I am planning on moving it in the very near future. I have not been able to use my recording desk in a year now. I am buying an additional desk so I can get to my gear again. I will definitely look into this. I am not playing in a gigging band right now and this would give me an outlet to jam if it works well enough. You may see me on there in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for posting this.

  • Early on in lock down my band tried a couple of options but we couldn't get it to work...from memory it was Jamkazam and I kept getting digital distortion ( like the CPU was tripping out). Also latency was crazy...


    I have no doubt its a set up thing, but to answer your question as to why people don;t use it, its because even with 3 people in my band that are IT guys and we couldn't easily sort it and we gave up, so I suspect Joe public will struggle...

  • Early on in lock down my band tried a couple of options but we couldn't get it to work...from memory it was Jamkazam and I kept getting digital distortion ( like the CPU was tripping out). Also latency was crazy...


    I have no doubt its a set up thing, but to answer your question as to why people don;t use it, its because even with 3 people in my band that are IT guys and we couldn't easily sort it and we gave up, so I suspect Joe public will struggle...We

    We´re using jamulus over internet and it was quite a journey to make it work in our 4 people band. Particularly I had trouble to bring latency down below 30 ms. I had an upgrade on my network hardware and tried all the tips to set up my lenovo consumer laptop with i5 processor, only with very decent improvements. Then I´ve discovered the jamulus stick, based on Linux and ready to run from the usb port without installation. I compared different laptops (I have nothing else...) and voilá it works very well when I use my company laptop with jamulus stick. Even if the specs seemed ok and I never had any other performance complaints it seems that my lenovo comes with some cheapish components that prevent to get a good latency on it, I´m tired of further investigation...

    So, if you`ll try to use jamulus, search for the stick version, that seems to be the easiest way to get good results (there´s also an analizing tool included that lists out potential trouble makers...)

    To rehearse online is a pain in the a... compared to being onsite together- but it´s so much better than not to play in a band...

  • I know some players are more sensitive to latency than others, and I fall into that camp myself so I never looked in this direction. I'm sure they're making improvements every day but ultimately the physical realities of putting audio down a wire over a long distance make it unlikely that it'll ever be latency free.


    Another thing I've been thinking about is remote recording projects (if that's not too OT for this thread), and I'm honestly surprised that I don't see much of it in Craigslist, either here in Atlanta or other major cities.


    Most DAWs do the same thing these days, and it's easy enough to share mp3s for reference and then return uncompressed wav files to whoever's doing the mixing. For example, I use Cubase, but as long as everyone agrees on the uncompressed format (e.g. I use wav 48/24) they could record in Pro Tools, Cakewalk, Reaper, StudioOne, etc. They drop an mp3 that's mix-minus them into a track, play to it, return the uncompressed track.


    In this scenario you don't get the joy of playing at the same time (I'm not sure if there's really any substitute for humans being in the same room), but you can create radio quality music and still be collaborative via Zoom meetings, etc. where people talk about the song, suggest parts, arrangements, etc.


    I mostly mention this because I would think that as cheap and ubiquitous as recording gear is these days that tons of people would be doing this and placing ads looking for remote participates. However, I see almost none of that, so I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on why that is.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • I know some players are more sensitive to latency than others, and I fall into that camp myself so I never looked in this direction. I'm sure they're making improvements every day but ultimately the physical realities of putting audio down a wire over a long distance make it unlikely that it'll ever be latency free.

    Just to flag Chris, my initial experience was the latency was in the order of 1.5 second, so beyond irritating, into unusable. From my perspective, it was that it takes so long to get it even usable.


    The market still seems immature for "simple" users like me :)

  • I still wait for the moment we will hear that these solutions are "workable"..


    It is irritating that we have so many voices which tell us that "it work"..but even more that tell us that we are still not there.This is confusing.

  • I still wait for the moment we will hear that these solutions are "workable"..


    It is irritating that we have so many voices which tell us that "it work"..but even more that tell us that we are still not there.This is confusing.

    Like all things involving computers, mileage varies greatly. What's an unbelievable hassle for one person is no big deal for someone else. That's true for latency, which will always be a factor when trying to do something across the Internet. However, a person's threshold for technical fiddling and frustrations will vary just as much. Also, how fast and reliable your network / Internet is plays a big part, which is different for everyone.


    I think a lot of these solutions actually do work to the satisfaction of many people. It's just a matter of fooling with it in your particular environment and measuring the fiddling / frustrations against the quality of results by your own standards and tolerances.


    Nothing involving a computer ever works well for everyone.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • Wow, this thread came back haha

    I'll try to answer everyone tomorrow!


    Jamulus funny enough started an affiliate program 2 days after my post so with the risk of being a bit spammy, if you want to check it out using my code that would be awesome.

    Without it is fine as well of course!!


    With affiliate code: https://www.jamkazam.com/landi…al/signup?affiliate=11118
    Without affiliate code : https://www.jamkazam.com


    Tomorrow I will answer any questions you might have about jamming online. But obviously as I'm just a random user there I don't have every answer. But I'll do my best! Let's get this online jam thing going :)