Should leader's sound be a slightly out? Internal metronome not helping! Or is it just me!

#1

I’ve been trying Flock for a week now & tried yesterday with another pro musician friend. When playing together (violins) the only way for it to sound together to her was for me to consistently play about a semiquaver ahead what I heard her doing which I could do if I used a separate metronome or accompaniment (not using computer but through my phone & external speaker). From my point of view it was quite a challenge to play with the accompaniment when I could hear her playing what sounded like a semi behind. Do you expect the leader to hear everything slightly delayed?

When we tried the internal metronome if I said “1,2,3,4” exactly in time with the light/sound I heard this did not match up with what she was seeing or hearing.
Any tips? THank you

This is the health check I did before the session

30.3.21 directly from router

---- v 1.3.9----

Wired internet connection?: Wire

Can we reach the flock server?: Yes!

Central server can reach flock app?: Yes!

How long to connect to your router?: 1.67ms

Download speed: 288.30 Mbit/s

Upload speed: 33.06 Mbit/s

Internet Ping: 11.54 Ms

Audio buffer size equals 128?: 128 Samples

Audio sample rate equals 44100?: 44100 Hz

Computing challenge speed test: 1.01 Seconds

---- 10----

#2

Hi Helen, your health check numbers all look good.

That will introduce a bit of latency. If you’re able to play it through your computer or audio interface it should shave off a bit of the delay. Same applies to keyboards, electric guitars, etc - less delay if one can plug them in rather than play through the air and into a mic.

The delay is going to be largely due to the distance over the internet between the two of you (which is closely related to the geographical distance between the two of you) and how much traffic is on the internet. Generally, there isn’t much one can do about this. If it’s just two people then you might get a better result if you’re both with the same internet provider.

In the context of a larger singing group (rather than 2 or 3 people playing instruments), we’ve tried a few different things to keep people singing together. If you’re accompanying with an instrument, then “conducting” with the instrument, by playing a bit ahead when necessary has been helpful. Using a backing track with a clear beat (and if possible with the voices on the track at lower volume) also keeps everyone together quite well. And then the “mix-in-sections” feature to hear one’s own section louder has also been helpful for this.

Paul