[Discuss] suggestions for low latency Internet audio conferencing software suitable for performing music?

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

First, thanks for all of the interesting replies on why this is hard
and possible alternatives.
I had done some searching before posting my inquiry, so it wasn't all
new to me; but
still helpful.  Here is some info/links that others might find helpful
if interested in the
topic:

1. Sound travels at about around 1100 feet per second.   So if you are
11 feet from a collaborator
that is 10 ms.  Human apparently adapt to this easily for music, but
longer distances require
visual cues to keep musicians in sync.  Thus the need for conductors
for orchestras and drum majors
for marching bands.  This does imply, however, that a 20ms network
delay might be okay if the computer
delay is negligible.

2. An open source project NimJam
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninjam) and related commercial? product
Jammr (https://jammr.net/)
tries to get around latency, by requiring everyone to use headphones
and forcing a delay long enough to account for latency.  So you hear
yourself and others with synchronized delay.  Apparently you can get
used to this.

3. Another open source program Jammulus
(http://llcon.sourceforge.net/) which just assumes you have low enough
latency
for it not to be a problem.  They claim 40ms latency works.  But you
also need low latency audio hardware/codecs.

4. Some more open source out of Italy.  Seems to require pretty
specialized hardware/network connections: https://lola.conts.it/
As well as https://www.soundjack.eu/ which I haven't figure out much yet.

5.  There is some commercial stuff out there
(https://www.jamkazam.com/) but from online resources it is not clear
if it actually
works as they claim.

6. Wikipedia has an article on the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Networked_music_performance

Bill Bogstad