software for remote collab working on same project

[thawkins]

Does anyone know a good software tool that can do videoconferencing, screen sharing and LOSSLESS AUDIO for being able to collaborate with someone over the internet on the same project?

I am thinking some combination of Soundflower and TeamViewer (to allow the other guy to mouse around too) should do the trick. The only question is how to ensure that the remote participant can also hear the high quality audio stream directly from the DAW?

And of course how to set it up so it does not require insane amounts of technical know how...

[Guest]

never used it myself, but perhaps this;

https://www.ohmforce.com/OhmStudio.do

[Entorwellian]

I would love to know this too but was thinking video + high quality audio would be a bandwidth killer in a time of other people using it for keeping in contact with family and businesses having to operate.

Or a cloud computing thing where multiple users can work on one machine somehow?

[chim]

We sorta did this using NINJAM once. It was hilariously awful an out of sync. 

In all seriousness I think Bitwig has some sort of coop functionality. Edit : Apparently not, the core functionality is coded in but it's a "when it's done" thing... 

 

 

[thawkins]

1 hour ago, Entorwellian said:

I would love to know this too but was thinking video + high quality audio would be a bandwidth killer in a time of other people using it for keeping in contact with family and businesses having to operate.

Or a cloud computing thing where multiple users can work on one machine somehow?

That's certainly an issue too. Still there is an enormous amount of streaming going on right now anyway and I would say morally this sort of collaborative musicianship should win over mindless netflix and youtube in terms of usefulness.

3 hours ago, plugexpert said:

never used it myself, but perhaps this;

https://www.ohmforce.com/OhmStudio.do

Thanks. I found it too but I am looking for a kind of simpler, more general solution that would work regardless of DAW software. No need to even set up some cloud thing all over it.

For instance I know TeamViewer is sort of the industry standard for providing remote support - basically it allows the remote user to take your computer over to fix something instead of going crazy trying to guide the user through the steps. Who says this can't be used for tweaking levels and filters in a DAW?

The downside of TeamViewer is that it's basically a huge security hole and you might definitely want to keep it shut down unless not in use.

For the audio side I am thinking to just set up a Icecast 2 server. It's not lossless though... and the audio is going to be delayed compared to the visuals, but no easy way to fix that...

[thawkins]

Found something here for the streaming part https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/

[thawkins]

I actually set up a Ninjam server on my raspberry pi the other day. We've tested it out with a couple of jams now and I got to say it works very well.

You get to plug your studio setup easily to the other person's, your sound is perfect because you are already used to it. The only thing to focus on is making the sounds work well together.

It's also brilliant for a live-set-like setting for practice. Definitely I have gotten better working with the Push already.

[TubularCorporation]

I never messed with Ninjam before because on paper it sounded awkward and I didn't really know anyone else who was interested, but now that I've been using it with THawkins and some local friends who are wroking from home now I'm really in to it, and my local friends already expect to keep using it regularly even when we're able to play together in person again. Playing together in person is the best, but being able to have everyone combine their entire home studio setup is also really good, and we haven't even gotten to session mode yet.  Meet up in person to write and record basic tracks then do arrangement and overdubs remotely in Ninjam session mode seems like the best of both worlds for working on recorded music with a (mostly) local group of people who all have some kind of home recording setup.

 

A Reaper update a couple days ago finally added synchronized transport start to ReaNinjam, so it's easy to get MIDI clock in time with the Ninjam server now.

[BCM]

I sell Enterprise video conferencing and collaboration solutions for a living. There are none that have anywhere near lossless audio and this is not a feature being asked for by the market. People want high quality video sure - HD and 4K where practical. But never lossless audio.

 

There are definitely providers out there who claim to have "HD audio" but it's still hugely compressed and you're looking at 128kbps, maybe 192kbps max. And most customers dial that down anyway to reduce bandwidth and the impact on their network.

 

So I think you'll struggle to find a way to do what you want in real time - you'd be better off sending WAVs back and forth via email, or a solution that offers "persistent" content in virtual rooms - Cisco Webex Teams for example.

 

 

 

 

[thawkins]

25 minutes ago, BCM said:

I sell Enterprise video conferencing and collaboration solutions for a living. There are none that have anywhere near lossless audio and this is not a feature being asked for by the market. People want high quality video sure - HD and 4K where practical. But never lossless audio.

 

There are definitely providers out there who claim to have "HD audio" but it's still hugely compressed and you're looking at 128kbps, maybe 192kbps max. And most customers dial that down anyway to reduce bandwidth and the impact on their network.

 

So I think you'll struggle to find a way to do what you want in real time - you'd be better off sending WAVs back and forth via email, or a solution that offers "persistent" content in virtual rooms - Cisco Webex Teams for example.

Thanks, that's really interesting.

Quite honestly I am not expecting real-time lossless audio either, even having a 1-2 second delay (like with AirPlay devices to be able to synchronize video with wireless speakers) with lossless quality (or even high quality like 320kbps mp3 stream) would be hugely useful.

I could see pro studios being interested in this kind of workflows for sitting at the same mixing desk "virtually" but the participants being in a different physical location and receiving audio through a lossless link and having their local headphones calibrated through the Sonarworks software. (This is bullshit of course, I have no idea what pro studios want).

Dropboxing WAVs is the standard too but it's way more less immediate and let's people do small tweaks and hear results instantly.

In practice with Ninjam (which seems to claim 240kbps stream) I have so far not noticed anything bad about the sound quality. For Reaper users the session mode actually should be able to provide what I am talking about too.

Technically it seems there are a few lossless streaming options that can do a 1,411 kbps FLAC stream, which sort of gives an idea of what bandwidth is needed for this.

Edit: sorry this is just a bunch of thoughts I threw together quickly.

[producer snafu]

https://www.teamviewer.com/en-us/

[mcbpete]

On 4/6/2020 at 1:34 PM, thawkins said:

Dropboxing WAVs is the standard too but it's way more less immediate and let's people do small tweaks and hear results instantly.

To be honest I'd say this would be (for me) the simplest and best quality option at the moment. Get feedback from the wav (possibly with timecodes) and then tweak as necessary and send a new wav. If both parties are working on the same DAW and have the same plugins just email the project files to one another and they can tweak everything as necessary with just tiny files.

Used that on the last album (many moons ago) sending Reaper projects back and forth with tweaks to the timeline and mixing until we were both happy with the sound and order.