Help with trying to jamm online with my band please

[ead]

Hi folks

As a technical muppet (please assume spectacular levels of ignorance and incompetance) I would like to try to arrange some sessions with the band to try out new ideas etc.  So far I have tried Jammr and Jamshazam but I have no idea what I'm doing and not sure if I've set anything up correctly plus can't hear my bass when I plug headphones into my laptop.

I have a Windows laptop and what I can get to work is Audacity with my bass plugged into an Ashdown Tone pocket itself connected to my laptop via the USB cable provided.  My headphones are connected to the Tone Pocket socket.  At least I can record a bass part this way and send it to the band (guitarist/vocalist and drummer).  I can get a guitar part back and hear both together on Audacity but not quite figured out how to sinc the two up yet

Any help gratefully received!

[GisserD]

Firstly make sure you have a wired connection. WiFi introduces too much latency.

Jamkazam was a pain to setup but the latency was lower than everything else I tried.

Sofasession was very simple to setup and works well too.

Edited April 26, 2020 by GisserD

[PaulWarning]

29 minutes ago, ead said:

Hi folks

As a technical muppet (please assume spectacular levels of ignorance and incompetance) I would like to try to arrange some sessions with the band to try out new ideas etc.  So far I have tried Jammr and Jamshazam but I have no idea what I'm doing and not sure if I've set anything up correctly plus can't hear my bass when I plug headphones into my laptop.

I have a Windows laptop and what I can get to work is Audacity with my bass plugged into an Ashdown Tone pocket itself connected to my laptop via the USB cable provided.  My headphones are connected to the Tone Pocket socket.  At least I can record a bass part this way and send it to the band (guitarist/vocalist and drummer).  I can get a guitar part back and hear both together on Audacity but not quite figured out how to sinc the two up yet

Any help gratefully received!

play along to a click track, with say four clicks before you start playing I can't think of another way unless the drummer lays down his track first, then just slide one of the tracks until they line up

[fretmeister]

You can’t do it live.

internet lag is too large.

drummer plays and you hear it 0.25 seconds later. You play, and you drummer hears it again only now it’s a full half second out from the original. 

Best you can do is record your parts separately and email the file.

[mike257]

30 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

You can’t do it live.

internet lag is too large.

drummer plays and you hear it 0.25 seconds later. You play, and you drummer hears it again only now it’s a full half second out from the original. 

Best you can do is record your parts separately and email the file.

This. 

If you're actually recording ideas and adding your own parts then sending back and forth, working to a click track will make it much easier to sync up. 

[Muppet]

56 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

Best you can do is record your parts separately and email the file.

Agree. We use BandLab to do this as simply as possible.  We tried Jamkazam but couldn’t handle the latency. 

[ead]

Thanks for the info folks.  Looks like Plan A may have been right after all

[mikeos]

We’ve had two sessions so far with Jazkazam.  First time latency was a big problem with just drums, bass, guitar and vocals.  Two of us, guitar and bass, were using an audio interface (Focusrite) that sort of helped.  Second session drummer bought a Focusrite and we all downloaded a universal driver for audio from ASIO ( http://www.asio4all.org/) which is free.  The Focusrite seems to recognise this. This seemed to really improve the latency problem, getting it down to about 2ms. I’m not an IT techy but I think with all of us using the same AI and, most importantly, downloading the ASIO software it improved things dramatically.

Headphones are plugged into the Focusrite not the laptop. Also as has been said elsewhere you need to use an Ethernet cable, dont rely upon Wi-fi. The Focusrite costs around £140 to £160, cheapest we found was on Thomann. 
 

So far the investment has been expensive (had to replace an old laptop) but the results after the second session were very promising.  Now just waiting for the other guitarist to get his act together and we can rehearse as a full band.