Latency question
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Does the latency of each participant’s system depend solely on their equipment, Ethernet connection etc. or does the other participants equipment and connection and the number of participants effect that latency?
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Dear Michael,
Thank you for your question. The remote latency (the time between the moment a remote musician makes a sound and the moment you hear it), depends on “all of the above”.
To make rhythmic music in sync, make sure all participants connect their computers to their routers using Ethernet. Avoid extender/repeater routers and Ethernet-over-power adapters.
On good connections, FarPlay works for sessions of up to around 8 musicians (we’ve heard of rehearsals with more than 10). We recommend that each participant have at least 50 Mbit/s of upload speed (even 35 Mbit/s is better than 8 Mbit/s). FarPlay sends audio and video directly between users (“peer-to-peer” connectivity), so the bandwidth each person needs grows with the number of participants in a session. If musicians with too little upload speed join a session with too many people, there will be high latencies.
To estimate how much of the remote latency comes from your own audio equipment and computer, open a FarPlay session with just yourself and look for the “Local Latency” in the “Remote Sound” subpanel.
To learn more, including how to lower local latency, see our latency tutorial.
Thank you,
David Liao
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