Remote live synchronous audio for small choirs

[Shenandoah]

I am hunting for a suitable tool, even traditional video conferencing, that would enable a small choir to conduct sectional rehearsals remotely. My experience is that most conferencing tools are designed explicitly to inhibit simultaneity in order to preserve the clarity and back and forth of a conversation. Looking for any suggestions that will "keep us together" while we are apart.

Thanks

[The Red Bladder]

I know one choir (Oxford Bach) is using 'Zoom' but I have not asked how they are getting on.

All digital transmission involves latency (i.e. a time delay) and that seems to put the kibosh on things - until the technology improves!

[The Elf]

We tried a quick 'clap' experiment over Zoom at the SOS meeting - it's not going to work for synchronous performance. TBH I doubt that anything will, since everyone's latency is going to be different, dependent on hundreds of factors.

[Drew Stephenson]

Yep, it will vary within the session depending on what's happening at the time. Doing a screen share earlier today added about a second to audio and about 5 seconds to video.

[adrian_k]

If you don’t need video you might be able to use Jamulus. Works on Mac, Windows and Linux, and of the ones I’ve tried strikes the best balance between giving you enough things to adjust without being overly complex. But:-
- Everyone will need decent low latency sound cards,
- you’ll need to be plugged directly into your router
- you’ll end up getting frustrated with the publicly available Jamulus servers because there’s always a mad drummer or someone crashing in as soon as they see a server with a couple of people in it. So you’ll end up setting up your own private server.

But despite all that we are managing 30ms latencies, which is just about ok for medium/slow tempos. Plus I’m a guitarist so can’t play in time anyway