Ever since the pandemic, I have been trying different ways to work together remotely with you. The video chats work well for video but lack the features for good quality audio. Zoom, Webex, Facetime, Skype, Jitsi Meet – they all suffer being limited to mono audio, and an audio frequency range that is more suited to speech than music. Add to that the noise suppression algorithms that mangle sustained musical tones and it’s just not a good experience.

In the past I have used a product from Audionamix called ListenTo that worked well – full bandwidth audio, but there was no way for us to communicate with each other during a session.

Sonobus is the latest product to be offered to help musicians collaborate with each other. It was intended to be a solution for those who want to play live music with friends and band mates over the internet. It features:

• Full bandwidth, stereo CD quality audio
• Very low latency – usually less than 100 milliseconds to make the round trip from your mouth to the web and back again to your ears.
• Text chat is built in
• Voice chat is built in as well, with the ability to mute your mic input.
• Works on Windows, Apple, IOS, and Android – so you can use it with any device on hand.
• It is open source, so it will always have the support of the programming community
• It is free to use
• For best results, wear headphones or ear buds to prevent feedback.

It works well for tracking and general editing work. For mixing and mastering, however, headphones are not as accurate as speakers. When you book a remote session, remember to allow another half hour or so to get a good mix from me after we disconnect from Sonobus.