[Andrew9999]

Since early 2020 I've been successfully playing live with others - but not just those I used to play with in the same room.  Our groups now include people hundreds of km away.  We do this using Jamulus - which is free.  To get worthwhile results you need to get an external sound card (e.g. focusrite) and connect your device direct to your broadband (no wifi) but with some fine tuning it works really well for us, even with larger groups. 

So what's new?  Up until recently Jamulus was only available for Windows or iOS - but you can now install it on Android.  As long as you can plug in a "OTG Ethernet" adapter, you can use the internal mic and wired headphones just fine - even with a smartphone.

Combined with tablets connected to Mobilesheets over the Internet and shared set lists, we've found it a great source of enjoyment.  Some people play acoustic intsruments, others electric - or even sampled.  We've used it with various genres from classical to pop and traditional.

You can use free public servers - and risk (or welcome) others dropping in - but we use our own private servers hosted on Amazon Web Services.
 
Jamulus + Mobilesheets have truly kept us going through lockdown!

[BRX]

I'm interested in that. I have tried Jamulus like you described with my keyboard, a focusrite audio interface cable connection to my router with an 1000 MBit DL / 50 MBit UL connection and didn't get satifying results anyway. Still too much latency to play live together. 

What are your tricks and your finetuning?

[Andrew9999]

What are your tricks and your finetuning

There are many ways to improve your device settings - but they make small differences.  Key is a sound card and wired network (which you already say you have).

But by far the biggest impact is where you and the other players are with respect to the Jamulus server you use.  I am in Scotland and my server is in London - hosted in AWS EC2.  That's about 600km each way.  But I manage a ping time of about 18mS and overall delay of about 30mS.  Anything above about 50mS we found increasingly difficult and not enjoyable.  I have achieved these figures with Windows 10 or Ubuntu PCs. Wired Android tablet and smartphones are slightly worse (no external sound card).

In Jamulus everyone connects to a central server, sends their audio there, then a mix of everyone's audio (and yours) is sent back to each person.  So no matter how many people you have, the bandwidth to/from the server is the same.  As a result we don't find any difference when more people join.  

Key is each person's connection to the server.  Are they all getting good overall delay (as described above)?  If not, consider trying a different public server, or placing a private server somewhere else.  It's easy to install a private server, host it on your own PC at home, and test it - you will get a great connection of course, but how about everyone else connecting to you?  Do you have sufficient bandwidth at home?  How is their overall delay?  Sometimes using my home server does actually work better for everyone than the AWS-hosted ones.

AWS EC2 free tier is a great place for private servers - free for a year, great connection to the Internet, so great to test.  Is there an AWS region that is close to your musicians?  If you're located in Germany, for example, there has been quite a lot of discussion about alternatives to AWS from more local hosting providers.  A good place to start is the Jamulus discussion forum and wiki... Jamulus ‒ Play music online. With friends. For free.  If you haven't visited for a while, there continues to be new information added all the time.

[BRX]

Thanks for the info. Maybe I'll get a better result when I try it next time.