Jamulus - Internet Jam Session Software Reviews

We have been using Jamulus for online rehearsals for a 5 piece Jazz Band for over a year now and it has been invaluable. You can hear some tracks we recorded using Jamulus at www.terminologyjazz.com.

I have tried some of the alternatives but only recently came to use this. Oh what a lot of time I wasted before I got here! Very pleased with this software as it is easy for my musician friends to use, and fairly easy for them to set it up too. I have the Jamulus Server running in 3 different locations at the moment with different platforms etc: Windows on a VM in Chester; Windows on an Amazon AWS server in London and Linux (Ubuntu) also on an Amazon AWS server in London. We are all in Cheshire and at the moment there is very little difference in the performance of the three servers, but time will tell All are performing better that running the server on my own machine at home

This software is currently the most stable and most reliable way to play live music during the pandemic situation. And I think it will even change the way we do music together all over the world, Even if Corona one day will be gone again. Jamulus will stay :-)

Rehearsing online is sure better than not rehearsing at all during this covid time. I can see this as a way to have real brief sessions even after covid, to supplement in person rehearsals. And when touring is back, this will be a godsend for freelance sidemen who travel a lot. I have had about two dozen Jamulus rehearsals now with between two and four participants. Only once was the connection too poor to get anything done. Some have had really serious sound quality problems, but at least half have sounded pretty good. I would gladly pay a subscription if this evolves to the point where It could be Guaranteed to sound as good as the Ed Sullivan show in 1965, at least 95% of the time. Overall I am quite happy, it works much better than I expected.

from me 6 (!) stars, the 6th for helping thousend of musicians (with good internet connection) in this difficult time. This multiplatform (!) software is easy to use and absolute stable, the only limitation is latency (ping time) of your internet provider. After many good jams we had yesterday a great rehearsal on our private server with recording enabled and it worked perfect. Amazing! Thanks!

Great project, but needs quite some preparation to utilize - at least for Linux. As the combination of musically oriented people (at least those into classics) and a certain nerdness is rather scarce it is not so simple to find fellow players.

I've been working with Jamulus for a couple of months now. We've brought on about 50 new users, some of whom have no music tech experience. Jamulus has been excellent.

Happy to see this solution being developed.

The jam lives on! Wow. I’m still on cloud 9 from a jam session here last night with. I had a plan to set up a private IP address between me in California and my buddy in Seattle. After getting all the hardware needed — focusrite audio interface, Shure instrument mic, 1gig/s internet with Ethernet— we were up and running in no time albeit not in our own IP. We are very glad we joined an empty public room because eventually 5 other people showed up to round out a full band sesh complete with drums, bass. Etc. It felt as close as to the real thing as you can get sitting at home on couch. I was shocked. Someone from Australia jumped in and mentioned latency issues for himself but honestly it all ran so smooth and in sync that I wasn’t noticing or stressing about any lag given we were all plugged in. It was so easy to use! So grateful for this program right now. I was not getting my hopes up before the jam but now my head is in the clouds knowing I can finally realize a dream of starting a jam band with a childhood friend states away, the jam lives on!

After struggling with another platform that appears to be more fully featured, my friends and I are happily transitioned to Jamulus. We are all no more than 25 miles apart, we're able to play together in real time, three of us along with a 4th client providing a drum track. We have no problems playing together in time and rhythm, what a fantastic experience. The software has been very robust, we do not lose connections or experience odd client or GUI hangs that force us to disconnect and restart. Many thanks to the original author and other contributors for this fantastic contribution to the world of online jamming, fantastic!

I love this software! It has taken some time to get everything to work, with the right hardware and client and server configured optimally so as to produce the least lag. But as of now, we're flying. It's so great to be able to play with people again. The forums are great and even people who have dropped in to my server have been helpful. If you post a bug you get an almost instantaneous response from the developers, and every update is better. Thanks so much, guys!

This application excellently and brilliantly penetrates the barriers, empowering the user. Configuration issues are primarily on the client side, but isn't that what "personal computing" is all about? Yes, you will confront your personal failure. No surprises there: that's what being a musician is all about, anyway. Jamulus will enable you to get over them. The 4 stars are given because it can only get better. Now, I can get back to doing music and using technology and the Internet, instead of it getting in the way. THANK YOU! Update 20201004: It's been a couple of months on Jamulus. Here's my experience. Nothing better at this time, ease of use. Period. It meets the "synchronicity standard" -- meaning that within a 70 mile radius, it's possible to get less than 45 ms delay, which enables synchronicity between musicians. I test drove Jamkazam (nice facility but not as easy to use and several sessions didn't achieve objective) and did research and an install of JackTrip. Also, researched published info on the issue of latency (JackTrip has excellent info on the subject). On the server side of things, I also installed Ubuntu server in the cloud, in a geographical location closest to my residence. Server ping time in the cloud was (1 ) less than the ping time of other Jamulus users running server on his residential LAN (who also lives much closer to me than the location of the Ubuntu server) and (2) less than my ping time to that same user when running the server on my residential LAN. Thanks, again.

Great jamming app!

Simply the best online jamming software I know. And the only.

Jamulus is a life saver for musicians during the corona pandemic. I always thought it would be impossible to play in real time with acceptable latency, but Jamulus proved me wrong. It's getting better with each version, so maybe in the future it can bypass the space-time continuum and allow for real time jams on opposite parts of the world, who knows?

I loaded this onto a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for use as a server. Once I had added an entry to the port forwarding table in our router, it worked seamlessly. I'll be moving to a 4GB RPi 4 on Wednesday, so I expect to be able to support a couple more people. The only suggestion I have is that the server welcome message be included in the Jamulus Server Window, as well as in the command line parameters. Would make it much easier to change and view. Great job overall, thanks so much Volker and team Jamulus!

As a newcomer to this project, it is been unveiled as one of the most powerful resources for musicians during these quarantine times. Hard to set up at first, but endless possibilities to keep making music with peers all around the world. Hats-off! 🎩🙌🏿

Best of its kind.

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The user simplicity provided in this app is excellent, it shows the developers vision in creating a system with musicians in mind. The on going discussion shows the effort in making this app even better.

Preferred tool for online live band collaboration (not only in times of Covid).

Just great, an outcome for musicians in these strange times.

High quality software providing new usage for remote musicians! 15 years of work, congratulations and admirations to Volker Fisher.

Really appreciate this software, thanks Volker along with pljones and gilgongo for your level of support, dedication and development skills. I wish you all the success with Jamulus for years to come.

Life-saver for our string quartet which would otherwise not be performing any longer. Thanks to corrados for an amazing job! (six out of five for support!)