Re: Video conferencing with high quality audio

Bent Bisballe Nyeng <deva-61MmN/[email protected]> writes:

>> On 2026-03-06 11:18, Marc Groenewegen wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I'm looking for a video conferencing solution which offers high
>>> audio quality.
>>>
>>> I have the following minimum requirements:
>>>
>>> - high quality stereo audio for screen sharing (e.g. when presenting
>>> music/sound to your audience)
>>> - A/V sync for screen sharing, not just for playing videos but for
>>> live demos with PD, Supercollider etc.
>>> - preferably open source
>>> - preferably self hostable
>>> - multi platform or browser based
>>> - easy to use for end users
>>> - scalable up to 100 users (for presentations, lectures etc.)
>>>
>>> Do you have any ideas?
>
> Perhaps you could use something like jitsi (muted) for the video and
> and the a secondary session in jamulus for the audio?
> Jamulus can be set up to really high-quality sound.

That is not my experience.  Jamulus does not offer particularly good
audio: you get quite a bit of dropouts (the default behavior reduces
latency until some dropouts actually occur), and there is no attempt
whatsoever at noise or echo suppression, so you really need to work with
headphones (and for its principal aim of low latency, you don't want
digital wireless: FM wireless is fine though).

What Jamulus is good at is reasonable quality per bandwidth and quite
low latency.  It is a music ensemble tool.  Already when doing
teacher/student alternation, you might get along reasonably with
"normal" video conferencing solutions instead.  It is only when wanting
to play together that you need this combination of constant low latency,
absence of all of ducking, noise reduction and echo cancellation.

Combining Jamulus with Jitsi is kind of pointless because then the video
trails the audio by varying amounts.  This combo does allow for some
more personality with ad-hoc musician meetings not knowing one another
by sight, but it comes at the cost of making Jamulus somewhat less
effective.

"Latency" is not an issue with the given requirements, and the free Opus
codec used by Jamulus is actually used by other video conferencing
solutions (and webm video formats).

So while I have been using Jamulus successfully (and contributed to it)
during Covid-19 lockdown time to allow an ensemble of 6 players to keep
practising weekly, I just don't think it makes sense as part of a video
conferencing solution.

-- 
David Kastrup