Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

For performing musicians and engineers: stagecraft, engineering and gear.

Moderator: Moderators

Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by Mike Senior »

Just came across this. If it works it's a game-changer. It says it's uncompressed audio too:
https://farplay.io/

Anyone had any experience with it?
User avatar
Mike Senior
Frequent Poster
Posts: 1083 Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2003 12:00 am Location: Cambridge, UK

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by Hugh Robjohns »

It has to be uncompressed audio. Compression codecs all introduce latency -- and some common ones introduce a great deal of latency!

So the solution here is to shove a very large amount of audio data across a very fast internet link, as UDP packets with real-time headers to ensure prompt transport across the link.

The underlying technology is 'netjack2' and 'jacktrip' :

https://jackaudio.org/

You can read more on the concepts here:

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/groups/sound ... cktrip.pdf
User avatar
Hugh Robjohns
Moderator
Posts: 38835 Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 12:00 am Location: Worcestershire, UK
Technical Editor, Sound On Sound...
(But generally posting my own personal views and not necessarily those of SOS, the company or the magazine!)
In my world, things get less strange when I read the manual... 

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by Drew Stephenson »

From a quick read it sounds like it's trying to work on the same principles as Groovesetter (https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/groovesetter ), that worked using Jack.
But if that's a genuinely representative video then they've definitely sorted something out.
I'd be curious as to how it works with more than 2 participants and how they get round the peer to peer challenge that I mention in the Groovesetter article.

[EDIT] Ah, I've read a bit further now. They get around the challenge by not taking it on! It's only for two participants.
User avatar
Drew Stephenson
Jedi Poster
Posts: 24446 Joined: Sun Jul 05, 2015 12:00 am Location: York
(The forumuser formerly known as Blinddrew)
Ignore the post count, I still have no idea what I'm doing...
https://drewstephenson.bandcamp.com/

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by Folderol »

Very impressive. That guy looks familiar - think I've met him at Linux conferences.
User avatar
Folderol
Jedi Poster
Posts: 18061 Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2008 12:00 am Location: The Mudway Towns, UK
Yes. I am that Linux nut {apparently now an 'elderly'}
Onwards and... err... sideways!

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by Mike Senior »

Thanks for the input everyone! That's enough to make me definitely want to give it a shot. Could be really cool for remote training sessions, which I do a lot of these days.
User avatar
Mike Senior
Frequent Poster
Posts: 1083 Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2003 12:00 am Location: Cambridge, UK

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by Mike Senior »

Folderol wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 2:13 pm That guy looks familiar - think I've met him at Linux conferences.

Aren't all Linux users basically clones? Something about making humanity more no-frills and efficient... :beamup:
User avatar
Mike Senior
Frequent Poster
Posts: 1083 Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2003 12:00 am Location: Cambridge, UK

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by Folderol »

Mike Senior wrote: Fri Jun 24, 2022 6:56 pm
Folderol wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 2:13 pm That guy looks familiar - think I've met him at Linux conferences.

Aren't all Linux users basically clones? Something about making humanity more no-frills and efficient... :beamup:

Quite the opposite!
In fact, we get complaints that we keep producing variations of programs that are similar but not quite the same :tongue:
User avatar
Folderol
Jedi Poster
Posts: 18061 Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2008 12:00 am Location: The Mudway Towns, UK
Yes. I am that Linux nut {apparently now an 'elderly'}
Onwards and... err... sideways!

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by essej »

Another one to check out is SonoBus, if you haven't already... https://sonobus.net , which is a bit more flexible as it includes plugin and standalone versions, more options and is completely free and open source. The end-to-end latency might be a *little* higher than FarPlay (right now), and it doesn't have the separate broadcast buffer mode they have (yet), but it can handle a lot of use cases.
essej
New here
Posts: 6 Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2020 7:15 pm

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by camFarPlay »

Hi Cam here I work for FarPlay and wanted to let you know that FarPlay indeed does work check out farplay.io. If you are interested I can offer you a free trial of the plus subscription to test drive the advanced features.

It’s important to note that the uncompressed audio is when you record using FarPlay. When you play your monitor audio may vary but is adjustable with a slider to find the right balance between latency and quality.
camFarPlay
Posts: 1 Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2023 11:24 pm

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by ManFromGlass »

Sadly this can only be a dream for me. I live in the boonies and on a good day wearing a tin foil hat and standing on one leg I can get an upload speed of 2Mbps. I don’t come close to the 8Mbps required.
User avatar
ManFromGlass
Jedi Poster
Posts: 6645 Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 12:00 am Location: O Canada

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by Martin Walker »

Nevertheless, many thanks to Cam for taking the touble to join the SOS Forums and offer a free trial of the FarPlay plus subscription.

Thanks Cam, and welcome to the SOS Forums! 8-)

Martin
User avatar
Martin Walker
Moderator
Posts: 20599 Joined: Wed Jan 13, 2010 8:44 am Location: Cornwall, UK

Re: Holy cow! Is this real? (FarPlay.io)

Post by Wonks »

ManFromGlass wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 1:19 am Sadly this can only be a dream for me. I live in the boonies and on a good day wearing a tin foil hat and standing on one leg I can get an upload speed of 2Mbps. I don’t come close to the 8Mbps required.

Could you if you paid more? Upload speed is normally limited by the provider rather than a physical limitation of your connection.
User avatar
Wonks
Jedi Poster
Posts: 17001 Joined: Thu May 29, 2003 12:00 am Location: Reading, UK
Reliably fallible.
Post Reply