Network latency adaptive tempo in the public sound objects system

Abstract

In recent years Computer Network-Music has increasingly captured the attention of the Computer Music Community. With the advent of Internet communication, geographical displacement amongst the participants of a computer mediated music performance achieved world wide extension. However, when established over long distance networks, this form of musical communication has a fundamental problem: network latency (or net-delay) is an impediment for real-time collaboration. From a recent study, carried out by the authors, a relation between network latency tolerance and Music Tempo was established. This result emerged from an experiment, in which simulated network latency conditions were applied to the performance of different musicians playing jazz standard tunes. The Public Sound Objects (PSOs) project is web-based shared musical space, which has been an experimental framework to implement and test different approaches for on-line music communication. This paper describe features implemented in the latest version of the PSOs system, including the notion of a network-music instrument incorporating latency as a software function, by dynamically adapting its tempo to the communication delay measured in real-time.