Jacktrip: First Impressions
When I saw this news clip, and heard the technology was from Stanford, I had high hopes that Jacktrip was an even better solution for online community singing than Jamulus. My first impression: maybe, but it’s way too much work and cost to find out.
My introduction to Jacktrip was provided by Steve at MusiciansTogetherApart.com, a for-profit company operating Jacktrip servers. They had a 50% off deal on a 30-minute consult, so I snapped that up, because the Jacktrip documentation I had seen (for example: here and here) looked much more daunting than Jamulus’.
Steve first had me install two products; Jacktrip and Jack. Apparently Jacktrip requires Jack for the underlying audio server. Although having to deal with two products rather than one already made me wary of this solution’s complexity, I hoped that Jack would hide the techie innards from me, and Jacktrip would provide an incredibly easy-to-use interface that would make me glad there were two products. That ended up not being true. Both were technically very detailed and looked to be aimed at the technologically-sophisticated musician. They’re both free of charge, but the cost of using Jacktrip servers, at least through MusiciansApartTogether.com, is not trivial.
Steve told me about two (more) products that are designed to make Jacktrip much easier to use: Virtual Studio and Jackstreamer. Virtual Studio, sold by the Jacktrip Foundation, costs $150/person and comes with a required hardware “box”. The Jacktrip Foundation sells server time for Virtual Studio users. JackStreamer, sold by NetworkSound.com, costs $250/person and comes with a hardware box as well. Both companies recommend using an external microphone, so that’s an extra cost if you don’t have one. I wasn’t going to buy Virtual Studio or Jackstreamer, so I can’t tell how easy or hard they are to set up and use, but Jackstreamer has some setup videos here and Virtual Studio has FAQs here.
Steve and I got the free software products working after 45 minutes or so — it was having trouble seeing my Blue Yeti mic — which really doesn’t say anything about the software, any of these online products can have challenges during the first setup. The audio quality wasn’t any better than Jamulus’, although I’m aware quality can vary in any of these products depending on a variety of factors.
Bottom line, the free products were far too non-intuitive for me to want to go further with them, and I’m tech-savvy enough that I’m willing to take on a certain level of challenge….and asking community singers to pay $149-$249 for their setup (not including the leader’s server costs) is a non-starter for me, although a product like Virtual Studio may be so good it could be more than worth it for some, eg. larger choirs. Steve mentioned that Virtual Studio has been used with an 85-person choir; that’s far more people than I’ve seen Jamulus support thus far, although I have not been looking very hard, and I have not yet found a definitive answer on Jamulus’ max.
By comparison, I got my first Jamulus server up and running in 15 minutes, and those of you in the Song Circle know that setting up for the first time as a singer on Jamulus can be as little as 15-20 minutes as well, no external hardware is required, and then using Jamulus is pretty intuitive — use the faders to raise or lower the volume on each singer, etc. Plus Jamulus is completely free, and with Google’s $300 credit to launch a Jamulus server, the server is free for a good long time as well. I don’t have a vested interest in any of these products, but so far, what I’ve seen of Jacktrip doesn’t make me want to switch for my purposes, although I’m intrigued by Virtual Studio’s capacity for choirs.
I’ll be tracking Jacktrip developments, particularly any videos of Virtual Studio in action so I can get a sense of the ease of use. If any of you have any experience with any of these Jacktrip products (or any other online singing technologies), please feel free to use the Contact page to share any pros and cons. Thanks!