During the pandemic, when physical interaction between people was limited, we started a feasibility project to perform music over the Internet. The challenge of such a system is to keep the delay low while maintaining reasonable audio and video quality.

An audio latency of 20 ms is considered to be the maximum tolerable delay for music performance. This latency corresponds to the acoustic distance of 6.9 m. The video latency is also critical and should not be +/- 40 ms out of sync with the audio.

The result of the project was It works, but...

We did several tests in the greater Zurich area and were able to set up the system so that music rehearsals were possible. But it required a very good internet connection (typically fibre to the ISP) and low internet traffic. Internet traffic is unpredictable and degrades the performance of the system to such an extent that we have shelved the project for now.

What remains is a nice communication setup for high quality multichannel audio and low latency video with high-speed cameras and high-speed screens, waiting for another challenge.