Hei!

Firstof all, well done for Jammr. I believe it is based on NinJam's protocol, right? At least, that is how I found it. Anyway… I have a slight problem with Jammr sound configuration.
I am a guitar player, and I like to use a lot of amp sims. I like to combine them so I get the best achievable tone I can. And for that, I use my DAW, Sonar. I used JackAudio to connect my DAW to the input of NinJam, but JackAudio requires ASIO…

Since ASIO is used by lots of musicians, could you please make Jammr compatible with it?

Thanks!

(I shared a link to Jammr with a French guitar players community. NinJam does not work well with recent macs so it seems to be a better option )

EDIT:
I have juste tried Jammr with a friend of mine, who is using Mac. I just used amplitube and for jamming, it was fairly enough. It works great! However we think some features are lacking to make the experience fully enjoyable:
- It would be better if there were sliders to change the volume of the metronome ;
- It would also be better if we could change the volume of the other's channel as we hear it.

But frankly, that's it. ASIO, and some volume sliders would do the trick. Otherwise, it is one of the simplest jam software I've tried. It is user friendly, and I love it. I am really looking forward to see what else you'll come up with!

Thanks a lot for such a great software, and keep producing the great work! o/

Hellharicot
I am a guitar player, and I like to use a lot of amp sims. I like to combine them so I get the best achievable tone I can. And for that, I use my DAW, Sonar. I used JackAudio to connect my DAW to the input of NinJam, but JackAudio requires ASIO…

Since ASIO is used by lots of musicians, could you please make Jammr compatible with it?

jammr supports VST plugin chaining. This means you can create a virtual effects chain, for example, distortion plugin, amp simulation plugin, and finally a reverb plugin. You can move plugins up/down to change their position in the chain, see the VST panel in the Settings dialog.

Perhaps this is enough to support the audio routing you used in Sonar. For some background, here is the full story on ASIO support:

Unfortunately we cannot support ASIO at this time because the license is incompatible with the open source GPL software license that jammr uses. Other open source audio software faces the same problem (Audacity, Ardour, etc) and there are two options:

1. Tell Steinberg that you wish to see ASIO support available in open source GPL software: http://www.steinberg.net/en/support/support_contact.html

2. If you have experience compiling software, you may compile PortAudio with the ASIO SDK. Then you can compile the jammr client and it will have ASIO support.

Note that you may not distribute an ASIO-enabled client because that would either violate the GPL or the ASIO SDK software license - it's basically only usable by you and cannot be shared.

For more information on jammr open source, see http://jammr.net/opensource.html.

Hellharicot
(I shared a link to Jammr with a French guitar players community. NinJam does not work well with recent macs so it seems to be a better option )

Thank you, this is much appreciated. jammr only launched recently and by growing the community you are making it a better place to jam together online!

Hellharicot
- It would be better if there were sliders to change the volume of the metronome ;
- It would also be better if we could change the volume of the other's channel as we hear it.

Thanks for your suggestions. We definitely want to make it easy to manage volume levels and plan to tackle this problem soon.

We'd be delighted to hear any other ideas or help you with jammr in the future.

Wow. I am really surprised by how quick you responded. I thought you'd take a longer time to do so!

Now I get why you don't have ASIO support. But I didn't know about the VST side-chain thing, and that solves the problem. Also, I achieve lower latency with Jammr set up with the Wasapi driver mode than with ASIO in any other software. Unbelievable!
I was wondering: do Jammr support 64-bits VSTs, or just 32-bits? I thought about it when I loaded amplitube. How many VSTs can be chained in Jammr?

The other day I wrote some theoretical stuff about the use of NinJam to Jam. Most people don't get the interval, and assume the software isn't that effective as they can't cover songs with it. Basically, I noticed that the interval between the moment when you play and the moment your friend hears what you played can be easily overcome: only the perception of each player matters.
Hence I figured out that NinJam/Jammr are great to play jams over specific chord progressions. With a four chords progression over four bars, you could easily jam and hear what the other is playing on a B when you play a B. The BPI must just be defined like this:


Therefore, with a classic four chords progression like D - A - b - G:


Setting the BPI at 8 would do the trick, and you'd just have to play over it.

Now, here's the thing: the metronome is a little annoying there as the emphasized beat will occur at the wrong time. In order to make it work with that particular bar, we would need to emphasize beats 1 and 5, but keep the BPI at 8. Would coding such a thing be possible? We would have the BPI as a total number (8), and then subdivise it into two even bars (4 - 4).

I believe this would make the Jammr experience a little more enjoyable, although a bit more mathematical.

Hellharicot
I was wondering: do Jammr support 64-bits VSTs, or just 32-bits? I thought about it when I loaded amplitube.

On Windows only 32-bit is supported at the moment. If you are unable to use your favorite VST plugins because they are 64-bit only, please let me know. So far all the popular VST plugins I have tested offer a 32-bit version.

Hellharicot
How many VSTs can be chained in Jammr?

You can use as many VST plugins as you like. jammr does not set a hard limit, it depends on the processing power of your computer.

If you add too many plugins you may begin to hear pops/clicks/glitches because your computer is not powerful enough to process the audio in real-time. In that case I recommend either increasing latency in the Audio panel in the Settings dialog, or simply avoiding using too many VST plugins at once.

Hellharicot
The other day I wrote some theoretical stuff about the use of NinJam to Jam. Most people don't get the interval, and assume the software isn't that effective as they can't cover songs with it. Basically, I noticed that the interval between the moment when you play and the moment your friend hears what you played can be easily overcome: only the perception of each player matters.
Hence I figured out that NinJam/Jammr are great to play jams over specific chord progressions. With a four chords progression over four bars, you could easily jam and hear what the other is playing on a B when you play a B. The BPI must just be defined like this:

(number of bars x number of beats per measure) / 2 = BPI

Therefore, with a classic four chords progression like D - A - b - G:

(4 x 4) / 2 = 16 / 2 = 8 BPI

Setting the BPI at 8 would do the trick, and you'd just have to play over it.

Now, here's the thing: the metronome is a little annoying there as the emphasized beat will occur at the wrong time. In order to make it work with that particular bar, we would need to emphasize beats 1 and 5, but keep the BPI at 8. Would coding such a thing be possible? We would have the BPI as a total number (8), and then subdivise it into two even bars (4 - 4).

This works when two people jam together. It stops working when more people join the jam session:

User 2 will play over D - A in the 2nd interval. Then User 3 will hear User 2 over b - G in the 3rd interval - it does not fit.

In the future we might introduce a more advanced concept of BPM/BPI so there is a real time signature which makes your metronome ideas possible. The challenging part is keeping jammr simple enough for musicians of all levels.

If my 64-bits VST plugins don't work, I may attempt to use jBridge or anything similar. It may work.

Well, effectively, the more people are jamming the more difficult that BPI thing gets. I didn't think about it. Would setting a priority rule solve it? User 1 would be the first to play, User 2 the second one, then User 3 the third one. If the interval is longer between User 1 and 3, wouldn't the problem be solved for a 3 users jam?

I believe the thing there would be to keep this sort of diagonal shape at the beginning, whatever the number of people are jamming. But the more the users, the bigger the interval.

What would be your idea to improve such a concept? I am no programmer so I do not understand everything that occurs in the software.

I believe you shouldn't worry too much about musicians. As long as you explain things in a simple way, everyone will get how Jammr works. I would really like to help, so if you ever need the view of a musician I'll be there!

Hellharicot
If my 64-bits VST plugins don't work, I may attempt to use jBridge or anything similar. It may work.

Well, effectively, the more people are jamming the more difficult that BPI thing gets. I didn't think about it. Would setting a priority rule solve it? User 1 would be the first to play, User 2 the second one, then User 3 the third one. If the interval is longer between User 1 and 3, wouldn't the problem be solved for a 3 users jam?

1 plays | D A --- b G --- D A --- b G --- etc --- |
2 hears | --- --- D A --- b G --- D A --- etc --- |
3 hears | --- --- --- --- D A --- b G --- etc --- |

I believe the thing there would be to keep this sort of diagonal shape at the beginning, whatever the number of people are jamming. But the more the users, the bigger the interval.

What would be your idea to improve such a concept? I am no programmer so I do not understand everything that occurs in the software.

The simplest solution is to set the interval length to match the chord progression. 4 chords @ 4/4 time signature = 4 * 4 = 16 beats. This way everyone plays over the same chords.

For a 12-bar blues the BPI should be set to 4 * 12 = 48 beats.

It's pretty simple this way. It only gets complicated if the interval length does not match the chord progression length like in the D-A-b-G example.

Well that's the way it is meant to work, and it is effectively the simplest way to jam. However, it is not so practical when it comes to so long bars, as most jammers do not know where to stop their soloing. Because of it, they never stop, and there is no more musical exchange. On the other hand, it is hard to cope with such a huge interval, even though it allows musician to play over the same chords.
I believe there must be some sort of ethics amongst musicians, like « I play those 12 bars, then you play them, then he plays them and so forth ».

So… The only thing that would be needed would be the distinction between metronome and interval, so users could fix the bar measure at 4/4 for instance and still have a BPI of 48.

Thank you so much for taking my ideas into consideration. I appreciate, even though you have better ideas as you know the software better.

Hellharicot
Well that's the way it is meant to work, and it is effectively the simplest way to jam. However, it is not so practical when it comes to so long bars, as most jammers do not know where to stop their soloing. Because of it, they never stop, and there is no more musical exchange. On the other hand, it is hard to cope with such a huge interval, even though it allows musician to play over the same chords.
I believe there must be some sort of ethics amongst musicians, like « I play those 12 bars, then you play them, then he plays them and so forth ».

I agree, it becomes harder to jam with longer intervals. Responding to other musicians takes more practice and some luck to avoid collisions.

It can help to use private jam sessions for long intervals so you know the other musicians. If everyone is aware they can take turns soloing. In public jams it's more of a free-for-all .