Internet jitter is the “silent killer” of session quality. Musicians aren’t usually even aware of this, but it’s a really big deal.
Latency is one of the most important aspects of online music performance, and also perhaps the least understood. We are writing a series of blog posts to shed more light on the concept and nuances of latency. In this part 5 of 10 on latency (part 1 starts here), we discuss latency driven by Internet jitter – i.e. the extra latency/lag generated by the need to handle late or lost packets of digital music when the Internet doesn’t deliver everything perfectly on time.
Internet Jitter
When the digital audio from your instrument/voice is sent over the Internet to other musicians in your online session, it is sent in the form of an ordered series of packets. Think of packets like sugar packets, and inside each packet is a snippet of digital audio from your musical performance. For example, if you take 1 second of your musical performance, JamKazam snips that up into 400 packets, and these are sent in order from 1 to 400 across the Internet.
While the Internet is amazing, it is also imperfect. If any of your packets arrive at the computer of another musician late or out of order, this presents a problem. The other computer either needs to wait for a late packet to arrive, causing more latency/lag in the session, or it needs to move ahead without the missing packet(s) and play something, which may result in pops, clicks, or other undesirable audio artifacts. This is a classic rock-and-hard-place kind of problem.
The Jitter Buffer
A jitter buffer or jitter queue (see white box in diagram above) is used to deal with this issue. This is basically a (hopefully short) line at the receiving musician’s computer where music packets wait to get played. Let’s say this jitter buffer line is 4 packets deep. If your packets are delivered a little late, the other musician’s computer can play packets sitting in its waiting line, and hopefully the late packets show up in a bunch and re-fill the line in time to keep the music flowing.
Traditionally, apps set a jitter buffer depth and then hope for the best. The deeper this line, the more resilient it is to late packets. But the deeper this line, the greater the latency/lag. With just 4 packets at 2.5ms (milliseconds, or thousandths of a second) each, that’s 10ms of extra latency just to deal with jitter. JamKazam sees Internet jitter as the “silent killer” of session quality. Musicians aren’t usually even aware of this, but it’s a really big deal.
JamKazam’s Unique Tech Solve
Understanding what a big deal jitter is for online music performance, JamKazam was not satisfied to accept traditional approaches to managing this problem. Instead we invented and patented a unique jitter buffer algorithm specifically designed and optimized for online music performance to dynamically minimize jitter buffer depth while protecting audio quality. This is yet another unique and high-value differentiator in how JamKazam delivers the lowest latency in the industry, balanced with maintaining terrific audio quality.
JamKazam invented and patented a unique jitter buffer algorithm that dynamically minimizes the jitter buffer depth while protecting audio quality.
How Can I Minimize My Internet Jitter Latency?
There are a couple of things you can do as an individual musician to keep jitter down, so that it doesn’t ruin your online music sessions. The first and most important thing to do is to connect your computer to your home router using an Ethernet cable rather than using a more convenient WiFi connection. WiFi routers handle email and web browsing just fine, but they have a hard time keeping up with the number of music packets being sent and received in online music sessions. This has nothing to do with how much bandwidth you have from your Internet service provider. It’s a technical limitation in how most WiFi routers were built by their makers. If you don’t know how to connect your computer to a router using an Ethernet cable, here is a help article that explains it.
In addition to connecting via Ethernet, our other recommendation would be to power cycle your home router once a week, or at least once a month – i.e. pull the power cord out of the router for about 10 seconds and then plug it back in to hard reboot your router. We have found that routers get less efficient over time while running without a reboot, kind of like plaque building up on your teeth. You won’t notice this when browsing the web, but it can have a very negative impact on online music sessions as these issues build up in your router over time. A reboot flushes the problems and gets your router running at max efficiency again, and takes just a couple minutes.
The Next Article in the Series
Our next article – part 6 in our series on latency – summarizes the key things you can do to minimize your latency/lag in online music sessions. We’ll add a link to this article when it’s published.
Curious To See How This Works?
While we understand the natural skepticism many musicians feel about the ability to play together live in sync in online sessions, we’d point out that musicians have now played in more than 3 million online sessions on JamKazam. You can check out a handful of sample performances in this YouTube video, with all the musicians playing on JamKazam from their homes over the Internet. Or see a ton more recorded JamKazam performances on our YouTube channel. If you’re interested in trying it out, you can do so risk-free by going to https://www.jamkazam.com and signing up for a free account. We have a support team that can help you get set up and playing online successfully in private sessions with your band or in open/public sessions with other musicians if you’re not in a band.