Creating your own server

[Michael Peets]

We live in a medium sized city in Canada, 60 miles from Toronto. We have experimented with Virtual Studio devices (now called JackTrip Analog Bridge devices) with some success  connecting to JackTrip virtual servers in Canada. We had better results connecting to Montreal as opposed to Toronto. Now that seemed strange since Toronto is 60 miles away and Montreal is over 250 miles from us. Upon investigating using WhatRoute, we found some disturbing results. It seems that our ISP (Cogeco) routes us from Niagara to Burlington tp Montreal to Toronto, with periodic stops from time to time in the USA and even Japan. 

So, with using the virtual servers having unstable routing for us, we took an old Windows-based server, converted it to ubuntu server, added an lbuntu gui, installed Jack and JackTrip, and tested our VSD boxes connecting to this server. All of our group reside within twenty miles of our server. The results were much better than with the virtual servers in Toronto and Montreal. But, of course, we had to try and make things to better manage the connecting clients because all but one are tech-incompetent.  Using various tips, we installed many apps that were supposed to make things better, but none of them gave great results. We have a system that works pretty good but becomes unstable at times.

We explored options using virtual servers with AWS, DigitllOcean, etc., but the crazy ISP routing from/to our community is not going to help us.

So, we plan to buy/build a better on-premise ubuntu server with lots of resources. We want to be able to manage the clients better with something like SuperCollider. But, there are no step-by-step instructions to build a server with JackTrip and SuperCollider or some recommended other client management app(s). What we would like to have some guidance on is what we install and in what order? 

Anyone have thoughts on all of this?

[TJGigs]

My thoughts on this and switching to Jacktrip and running my own hub server. 

I'm not sure the scale of what you want to achieve... but I did not have to go to nearly the extent as it seems you describe.

Me and my band mates used Jamkazam with pretty good results over the past year or so, especially with JK's ongoing focus on continuous SW improvement. But we still had latency and connection inconstancy and sound quality issue at time.

 

I decided to research Jacktrip after watching Christian McBride's NPR video explaining that's what he used. Much research, trial and error later this is what I settled on. It ended up being very simple and works great.

• Ruled out any remote server HR (aws etc) and/or Jacktrip server subscription services Latency is just too great. Even for servers here in LA. From the Jamkazam latency experience we wanted to get as close to or under 20ms as possible
• I thought I would need dedicated HW just for the hub mode (-S) so set up my windows desktop with that and my windows laptop as local client (-C) BUT that was total over kill.  I just needed to run hub mode on my laptop (Intel I5) 
• We are running 2 mac clients, 2 windows clients and me as Jacktrip admin . The sound quality is much better and more consistent than JamKazam and the latency is pretty much undetectable
• I spent a lot of time with all the Jacktrip parms (q, r, --bufstrategy, etc ) to get the best results. We did metronomes/sync count tests with each participate to help determine latency impacts from all the settings. 
• Then standardized every one's config/setup on jackd, jacktrip, qjackctl  and session launch with scripts.
• Then implemented independent channel mixing for each participant to control locally on their client. (Windows using voicementer, Mac with blackhole and local AWS) 
• Got the patch bay to work automatically with qjacktrl (requires some manual xml tweaks) So you don't even have to reconnect all the spaghetti (we call it) in the connect window of qjacktrl
• Now we just all click 1 shortcut icon (me first because I run in server mode) to start the session.  We are all within 20 miles but the bass player 70 miles. Imperceptible latency.
• Low latency audio interface, wired Ethernet, and fast ISP upload speed, and physical distance are they key to any successful online playing. More so than what software (jacktrip, Jamkazam, soundjack, sonobus, etc) you are using

I did all this with no expense for me or bandmates and we have at least 2 standing sessions a week. It just sounds like we are all to together with headphones in a recording studio,

I can post details (screen shots, scripts etc)  if you are interested

T

[Michael Peets]

Your detail was very interesting and helpful.  Thank you for documenting what you accomplished.  However, in retirement, I seem to have cured myself of an addiction to Windows and am anxious for step-by-step suggestions for Jack, JackTrip and SupperCollider to be installed on an Ubuntu server.

[Mike O'Connor]

i'd love to see some detail around:

- the launch-scripts that you've set up for folks, and

- the way you're doing local mixing.

both of those sound like great innovations.

mike

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[Synthia Cynthia Payne]

+1 please!

On 10/5/2021 4:32 PM, Mike O'Connor wrote:
> i'd love to see some detail around:
>
> - the launch-scripts that you've set up for folks, and
>
> - the way you're doing local mixing.
>
> both of those sound like great innovations.
>
> mike
>
>> On Oct 5, 2021, at 2:54 PM, 'TJGigs' via jacktrip-users
>> <jacktri...@googlegroups.com

>> <mailto:jacktri...@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
>>
>> My thoughts on this and switching to Jacktrip and running my own hub
>> server.
>> I'm not sure the scale of what you want to achieve... but I did not
>> have to go to nearly the extent as it seems you describe.
>> Me and my band mates used Jamkazam with pretty good results over the
>> past year or so, especially with JK's ongoing focus on continuous SW
>> improvement. But we still had latency and connection inconstancy and
>> sound quality issue at time.
>> I decided to research Jacktrip after watching Christian McBride's NPR
>> video explaining that's what he used. Much research, trial and error
>> later this is what I settled on. It ended up being very simple and
>> works great.
>>

>> * Ruled out any remote server HR (aws etc) and/or Jacktrip server

>> subscription services Latency is just too great. Even for servers
>> here in LA. From the Jamkazam latency experience we wanted to get
>> as close to or under 20ms as possible

>> * I thought I would need dedicated HW just for the hub mode (-S) so

>> set up my windows desktop with that and my windows laptop as local

>> client (-C) _BUT _that was total over kill.  I just needed to run

>> hub mode on my laptop (Intel I5)

>> * We are running 2 mac clients, 2 windows clients and me as Jacktrip

>> admin . The sound quality is much better and more consistent than
>> JamKazam and the latency is pretty much undetectable

>> * I spent a lot of time with all the Jacktrip parms (q, r,

>> --bufstrategy, etc ) to get the best results. We did
>> metronomes/sync count tests with each participate to help
>> determine latency impacts from all the settings.

>> * Then standardized every one's config/setup on jackd, jacktrip,

>> qjackctl  and session launch with scripts.

>> * Then implemented independent channel mixing for each participant

>> to control locally on their client. (Windows using voicementer,
>> Mac with blackhole and local AWS)

>> * Got the patch bay to work automatically with qjacktrl (requires

>> some manual xml tweaks) So you don't even have to reconnect all
>> the spaghetti (we call it) in the connect window of qjacktrl

>> * Now we just all click 1 shortcut icon (me first because I run in

>> server mode) to start the session.  We are all within 20 miles but
>> the bass player 70 miles. Imperceptible latency.

>> * Low latency audio interface, wired Ethernet, and fast ISP upload

>> speed, and physical distance are they key to any successful online
>> playing. More so than what software (jacktrip, Jamkazam,
>> soundjack, sonobus, etc) you are using
>>
>> I did all this with no expense for me or bandmates and we have at
>> least 2 standing sessions a week. It just sounds like we are all to
>> together with headphones in a recording studio,
>> I can post details (screen shots, scripts etc)  if you are interested
>> T
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, October 5, 2021 at 8:08:30 AM UTC-7 michae...@gmail.com

>> <mailto:jacktrip-user...@googlegroups.com>.

>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jacktrip-users/74f17149-476d-47fb-83d0-8296adb41fd6n%40googlegroups.com

>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jacktrip-users/74f17149-476d-47fb-83d0-8296adb41fd6n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

>
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[TJGigs]

OK I’ll put the stuff I did into a PDF and post.It turns out it’s actually very simple and straightforward. I did a of lot of experimenting using existing capabilities of jack, jacktrip, qjackctl and local DAW/miixing softwares with some tweaks all working together.. Originally I had to set it up with -c and -s (small case) with multiple instances of Jack trip running and defined port offsets for each participant. I was having inconsistent client connection issues and UDP timeout issues with the -S -C (cap) hub mode. But after the jacktrip release last January -S (cap) got more stable. So I switched back to -C mode only needing one instance of Jack trip running. That’s the way I've been running for this past year.I also used TeamViewer (free version) to install on non-tech-savvy win participants. The mac guys I just gave the command lines, told them what to set in qjackctl, patchbay etc, and use mac aggregate device to get virtual channels with blackhole.
I'll start getting it together.

[TJGigs]

Ok. I just made a new post of everything I did. Thx Mike. I've been delaying doing this for almost year... 

I just like everyone else have spent so much time researching and trial and error just tying to get thing up and running so we can still play together but  remotely (My outdoor gigs in LA have started up again though....Yay!!