Can WebRTC help musicians?

Discuss how to promote using FLOSS to make music.

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Rainmak3r
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Re: Can WebRTC help musicians?

Post by Rainmak3r »

... and after some time, here's a rough prototype for the WebRTC jam session as well: https://github.com/lminiero/jamrtc
Not really working great at the moment, but it's a first step, so I'd love to hear feedback and possibly see contributions to improve it sooner or later!
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Re: Can WebRTC help musicians?

Post by Basslint »

Rainmak3r wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:30 pm ... and after some time, here's a rough prototype for the WebRTC jam session as well: https://github.com/lminiero/jamrtc
Not really working great at the moment, but it's a first step, so I'd love to hear feedback and possibly see contributions to improve it sooner or later!
Can't promise you anything but I'm part of a small group of Italian GNU/Linux musicians on Telegram (if you use it, I can invite you) with which I can test this.

Can we use the demo server?
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Rainmak3r
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Re: Can WebRTC help musicians?

Post by Rainmak3r »

Basslint wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 6:53 pm
Rainmak3r wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:30 pm ... and after some time, here's a rough prototype for the WebRTC jam session as well: https://github.com/lminiero/jamrtc
Not really working great at the moment, but it's a first step, so I'd love to hear feedback and possibly see contributions to improve it sooner or later!
Can't promise you anything but I'm part of a small group of Italian GNU/Linux musicians on Telegram (if you use it, I can invite you) with which I can test this.

Can we use the demo server?
That would be great! Expect it to perform poorly though :lol: Figuring out which parts of the code need tuning will be the next crucial step.
I don't use Telegram, unfortunately. On the demo server, I'll send you a private message as to prevent abuses you can't create rooms dynamically there.
drlucaswong
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Re: Can WebRTC help musicians?

Post by drlucaswong »

Dear all,
4D Jam now functions well using WebRTC group video chat along with MIDI through the same protocol.
Check it out!
https://4dpianoapp.com/jam
Best,
Lucas Wong
Dr. Lucas Wong (DMA, Yale)
Pianist and Inventor, 4D Piano
Web and iOS App Developer
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Re: Can WebRTC help musicians?

Post by tjarx »

I think I could use WebRTC for jamming with my friends. We plug our instruments into my computer and jam together with everyone using headphones, so we don't annoy my neighbors. The only problem is that it's hard to talk to each other when everyone's wearing them. So I had the idea of using our mobile phones as transmitters for cheap mics.
Of course, bluetooth came to mind first. While it works flawlessly to output the plugged instruments and the BT-mic audio simultaneously, the biggest challenge is for the mobile phones to output mic sound to its speakers (which would then be transmitted via bt). There are apps for that but I don't want everybody having to install an app in order to jam.

So a local web server where everyone can stream their mobile phone mic to via WebRTC would be perfect.

Anybody got any ideas how to achieve that?

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Re: Can WebRTC help musicians?

Post by Rainmak3r »

tjarx wrote: Tue Apr 04, 2023 8:37 pm

I think I could use WebRTC for jamming with my friends. We plug our instruments into my computer and jam together with everyone using headphones, so we don't annoy my neighbors. The only problem is that it's hard to talk to each other when everyone's wearing them. So I had the idea of using our mobile phones as transmitters for cheap mics.
Of course, bluetooth came to mind first. While it works flawlessly to output the plugged instruments and the BT-mic audio simultaneously, the biggest challenge is for the mobile phones to output mic sound to its speakers (which would then be transmitted via bt). There are apps for that but I don't want everybody having to install an app in order to jam.

So a local web server where everyone can stream their mobile phone mic to via WebRTC would be perfect.

Anybody got any ideas how to achieve that?

Apologies for the late reply!

Sounds like you're interested in taking advantage of a web based mobile app to do what you need. I'm not sure that would work very well: as I say in my presentation, the stack in browsers is not suited for truly low latency audio, and has several internal buffers at different levels. Besides, WiFi would add to the latency as well. The BT presentation part, though, could possibly be done via that web app: at least on Desktop, Chrome allows you to specify the output device of audio and video elements, so in case BT speakers are listed there when you enumerate the devices, it should be possible to route the audio to BT programmatically (I haven't tried, I'm just speculating).

I do think WebRTC can help, though: it's why I worked on my super-alpha prototype JamRTC at the time. My guess is that you could write a truly native mobile app that tries to at least cut all the buffers libwebrtc in browsers add: you'd still be stuck with WiFi limitations, but it may be worth a try.

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