Background
At the time I write this, vaccines for the current pandemic are starting to roll out, i.e. we can start to think about life going back to a more normal situation. Jamulus is a fantastic tool for online rehearsal, but the end result of rehearsals is in many cases a live performance. IEM systems are great for ensuring a tight and synchronized live performance, but traditional solutions are relatively costly and not so flexible
--800 USD/mono channel is typical for the IEM system itself
--To provide individual mixes for each member, then quite expensive soundboards/soundcards are also needed (you normally want yourself to be a bit louder than "front of house" mix, and you normally also want to add a click track),
Very recent developments
Recently, a very cost effective approach has arrived:
--A computer with a multi-channel soundcard does the A/D conversion (i.e. acts as a traditional transmitter)
--A good quality Wi-Fi router is connected to the computer over Gigabit LAN
--Normal mobile phones are used as portable D/A converters (i.e. acts as a traditional receiver, with the added bonus of working in stereo)
Two commercial alternatives are now on the market providing this solution, both charging ~100 USD/connection:
--Audiofusion (www.audiofusionsystems.com). Latency measurements places it in the 22~24 ms region, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ2doYpHmEg&t=643s
--Stagewave (www.stagewave.io). They officially state down to 17ms latency, and I did indeed arrive at this figure in my own simple testing (using Oblique Audio RTL Utility).
--Note that Myxyr seems to have been first with this idea, but from what I can tell that project/product looks dead? https://www.myxyr.com/en/
My initial proposal
A Jamulus server, which is the only participant that can add sound. 2 to 8 mono channels probably covers more than 99% of the potential end users?
--Windows
--Linux
--macOS
"Listen only" Jamulus clients, that can create their own individual mix (decrease click track a bit and pan fully to the left, increase drums and bass slightly, pan guitars fully to the right etc.)
--iPhone
--iPad
--Maybe Android 8.1+ at a later stage?
--Windows?
--Linux?
--macOS?
Based on the excellent performance with the Opus Codec in Jamulus, I see no reason to deviate from this approach. If anything, this could probably be a big advantage if the amount of listeners increase.
What do you think?
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I think listen-only clients for Jamulus could be a nice idea, although too many of them might consume the bandwidth needed for players.
Regarding the monitor idea, did you check Sonobus? It's a p2p system with mobile clients. I am not sure how well such thing may function when sharing the same WiFi channel.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I did not know about Sonobus, thanks for the recommendation! Since it already has an iPhone client that can operate in "Listen Only" mode, this is probably the project that is currently best suited for IEM purposes.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Background
At the time I write this, vaccines for the current pandemic are starting to roll out, i.e. we can start to think about life going back to a more normal situation. Jamulus is a fantastic tool for online rehearsal, but the end result of rehearsals is in many cases a live performance. IEM systems are great for ensuring a tight and synchronized live performance, but traditional solutions are relatively costly and not so flexible
--800 USD/mono channel is typical for the IEM system itself
--To provide individual mixes for each member, then quite expensive soundboards/soundcards are also needed (you normally want yourself to be a bit louder than "front of house" mix, and you normally also want to add a click track),
Very recent developments
Recently, a very cost effective approach has arrived:
--A computer with a multi-channel soundcard does the A/D conversion (i.e. acts as a traditional transmitter)
--A good quality Wi-Fi router is connected to the computer over Gigabit LAN
--Normal mobile phones are used as portable D/A converters (i.e. acts as a traditional receiver, with the added bonus of working in stereo)
Two commercial alternatives are now on the market providing this solution, both charging ~100 USD/connection:
--Audiofusion (www.audiofusionsystems.com). Latency measurements places it in the 22~24 ms region, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ2doYpHmEg&t=643s
--Stagewave (www.stagewave.io). They officially state down to 17ms latency, and I did indeed arrive at this figure in my own simple testing (using Oblique Audio RTL Utility).
--Note that Myxyr seems to have been first with this idea, but from what I can tell that project/product looks dead? https://www.myxyr.com/en/
My initial proposal
A Jamulus server, which is the only participant that can add sound. 2 to 8 mono channels probably covers more than 99% of the potential end users?
--Windows
--Linux
--macOS
"Listen only" Jamulus clients, that can create their own individual mix (decrease click track a bit and pan fully to the left, increase drums and bass slightly, pan guitars fully to the right etc.)
--iPhone
--iPad
--Maybe Android 8.1+ at a later stage?
--Windows?
--Linux?
--macOS?
Based on the excellent performance with the Opus Codec in Jamulus, I see no reason to deviate from this approach. If anything, this could probably be a big advantage if the amount of listeners increase.
What do you think?
I think listen-only clients for Jamulus could be a nice idea, although too many of them might consume the bandwidth needed for players.
Regarding the monitor idea, did you check Sonobus? It's a p2p system with mobile clients. I am not sure how well such thing may function when sharing the same WiFi channel.
I did not know about Sonobus, thanks for the recommendation! Since it already has an iPhone client that can operate in "Listen Only" mode, this is probably the project that is currently best suited for IEM purposes.