SonoBus
A free, real-time remote rehearsal & collaboration streaming software.
6 November 2023
SonoBus is a free, open-source program that offers high quality network audio streaming, and allows users such as musicians or podcasters to collaborate in real-time. It is an easy to use application that allows peer-to-peer streaming of high-quality, low-latency audio between devices over the internet or a local network.
The software provides practical and flexible input and output routing which allows users to create and manage their own personal monitor mix of the session. For best results, and to achieve the lowest latencies, connect your computer with wired ethernet to your router. Although it will work with WiFi, the added network jitter and packet loss will require you to use a bigger jitter buffer to maintain a quality audio signal, which results in higher latencies. Wired headphones are also recommended.
How much latency is too much? Most experts agree that 40ms latency is about the upper limit for music, and that 25ms is small enough to be ‘good enough’. Note that these are one-way latency numbers, SonoBus reports both round-trip and one-way estimates in both directions. There are also geographical limitations to this, but if connections are made within an 800km radius then adequately low latency should be achievable.
SonoBus is available as a standalone program or as a plugin for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android operating systems.
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