[Mike Powell]

Is the range world wide?

[David Liao]

Dear Mike,

Thank you for your question.

For sync’d rhythmic music, the range is not world-wide. With good connections, musicians several hundred miles or, say, a thousand miles, apart can feel as though they’re in the same room. Here’s a recording with musicians about 700 miles apart:

• Across Sweden: https://youtu.be/VQmltUFPWBQ

(All the examples I’m linking are recordings of musicians playing live together, not at separate times and then resync’d).

If musicians are 3000 miles apart, they’ll definitely feel the lag when trying to play fast tempos, but they can still play laid-back music together (for rhythmic music, it can feel like the other person is on the back of the beat). Here are a couple examples of recordings made over distances greater than 3000 miles:

• New York to Scotland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfCm1xYGhGk&t=50s
• New York to London: https://youtu.be/4KgokPHKbIc

At larger distances, the delay makes it difficult to do rhythmic music together, but you can still improvise loosely, and you’ll still be able to hear each other with really high-quality audio. Here’s an example recorded across about 6800 miles:

• New York to Japan: https://youtu.be/hpoN71tbKjU

Data travels no faster than the speed of light. Light is fast, but, unfortunately, not fast enough to allow people on opposite sides of the globe to feel as in-sync as two people standing 20 feet apart in a room.

Thank you,
David Liao

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