[Julienne Pape]

Do both musicians have to hard wire to modem? I teach student
s who are not able to hard wire to modem.

[David Liao]

Dear Julienne,

Thank you for your question.

If you and your students don’t need to play together in rhythmic sync in your lessons (you just take turns playing individually), then the students don’t need to connect their computers to their routers/modems using Ethernet. They can use FarPlay with Wi-Fi, and you should get audio quality and latency that are substantially better than with Zoom.

If you want to make rhythmic music in sync together, Ethernet is strongly recommended. Advise students that Ethernet cables https://a.co/d/bRZfNwR can be up to 300 feet long without signal degradation. A student can roll the cable out just for a session and roll it back up afterward. No need to drill holes and bury an Ethernet cable in walls. For computers that don’t have Ethernet ports, use a USB-to-Ethernet adapter (for USB-C https://a.co/d/9NEjhUM or USB-A https://a.co/d/gZmhnvj).

There are ways to make rhythmic music in sync without Ethernet, but they’re typically less convenient, less reliable, and potentially expensive. If you share with us the following information for students who can’t use Ethernet, I could give suggestions:

• Make and model of router
• Make and model of computer
• Does the student live in an area with a lot of neighbors (examples: apartment/condo, suburban development) or are the student’s neighbors far away (example: rural)?
• Does cable TV wiring run from near the router/modem to the student’s rehearsal room?

Thank you,
David Liao

• This reply was modified 1 week, 3 days ago by David Liao.