Welcome
to rtjam-nation

A network of users playing music together in real time over the internet.

Demo

This demo audio was recorded live using the mix from one of the players (the handsome bass player). Each individual player recorded the video of themselves playing and that was stitched on top of the audio later for the video. rtjam-nation just does audio but the video makes it easier to understand what is happening.

How does it work?

  • Each user has an rtjam-unit that allows them to plug in two channels of audio, like a microphone and some kind of instrument. This unit is connected to their network using an ethernet cable. Try as we may, wi-fi connections no matter how fast just introduce a bunch of jitter in the audio stream that prevents it from having low enough latency to play music. Someday 5G might solve this.... But until that time, a hard wired ethernet connection is needed to play music together.
  • Users connect to virtual rooms where they can all hear each other. Each room supports up to 7 people at a time.
  • Rooms are hosted by RTJam community members with good hearts and kick ass internet connections. We are adding servers to host more rooms all the time. We have rooms in the SF Bay area, Portland OR, and NYC.
  • Here is an example rtjam-unit with a raspberry pi 4 and a FocusRite Scarlett USB audio device:

    this is an rtjam-unit
  • The raspberry pi runs the software that does the real time streaming to the internet over the ethernet interface. Audio is provided to the pi over the USB interface using the Scarlett. Other USB interfaces are also supported. Here are some Instructions on how to "stand up" an rtjam-unit.
  • Control of the device is done using this website! The u/x for a connected unit looks something like:

    this is unit control ux