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Get ready.
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Be history. Get started.
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Welcome.
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Hi. Hi. Hi.
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Hello, everyone, to the pro audio suite.
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These guys are professional and motivated.
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Please take the video. Stars.
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George was a founder of Source Element.
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Robert Marshall, international audio
engineer Darren Robin
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Roberts and global voice Andrew repeaters.
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Thanks to tribal Austrian audio lighting,
passionate elements George the tech
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wisdom and Rob APIs international demos
to find out more about us.
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Jake the Proteas sweetcorn line up.
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Ready? Here we go.
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And welcome to another pro audio suite
thanks to Triber.
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Don't forget the code.
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Try Pip 200 to get $200 off your try.
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Booth and Austrian audio
making your passion heard.
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And like should you say there is something
heading this way towards me?
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That's me from Austrian audio.
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Can't say anything yet, but, we'll be
giving that a whirl in weeks to come.
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And I'm a little bit excited.
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I want to know. Can't tell you.
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How I'm going to wonder that I'm going
to be completely distracted for this.
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What?
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It was just going to keep coming up
with random ideas through the episode.
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Yeah, exactly. Going is it is it?
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Yeah. Does it sound like.
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Can you get it at CVS?
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Yes, you can.
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But it's under a plexus plexi.
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Kits.
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You have to get them to out
open it up for you.
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Is it chocolate colored.
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And there are no buts about it.
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But anyway.
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You had.
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To be on the beginning of the show.
Seriously.
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Maybe we should do that for a,
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We should put that out as the episode.
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It's a Patreon, you know?
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You want to hear the weird shit?
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I said I'd like to. Get that. Joke.
Yeah. Patreon.
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I mean, the nice bit there is.
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You know, we're now talking about
hearing things late, so there you go.
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That probably sits.
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Oh, it does indeed,
because the latency is,
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Well, I mean, everyone kind of knows
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what latency is,
but really do we know what latency is?
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Well, I.
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Think a lot of people are confused about.
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What is. See, delay.
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Let's let's start let's start with what?
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It's not it's not echoing back.
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Yeah.
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Well, it kind of does.
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I mean, I guess because, you know,
if you like, you can sort of hear
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ringing in other people's
headphones and stuff. Right?
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Echoing back is caused by latency,
but latency is not echoing.
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Best latency is what in its most basic
form, latency is the time it takes your
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audio signal to go through your system
to be processed digitally.
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Sometimes
it might be sent to another machine
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and come back,
and then it's got to go back into
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whatever it is you're using
and then go back out.
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So it's the time it takes
is time for that process to happen.
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Yeah. Latency is the time for a process
to take place.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And sometimes for me to understand
what you just said.
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Yeah.
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So like say, look, I mean, biggest place
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I know the city's on source
connect sessions when I'm working with
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maybe doing a voice over demo
with or recording someone in the States.
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Right.
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Because it's got to get to me
from the States and source connects
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for to do it sync.
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And you can talk more
about what happens there Robert.
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And then it's got to go from me.
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I've got to sort of re spot,
I've got to respond.
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And then it's got to go back
through that same process back to right.
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Yeah. That's gone.
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So that's a round trip. So that's. A real.
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Classic latency.
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The classic latency
joke is the guy who's like at the like,
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you know, the war correspondent
out in the field in the control room.
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Just like what's it like out there.
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Oh yes Kenny.
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Yeah. Yeah. It is really awful out here.
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It's there on a satellite.
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Q then it's going to be 3 or 4 second to.
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Right? Yeah.
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So so what what sort of things
are happening inside a plugin.
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Let's talk about for example,
Inside Source Connect.
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Without giving away any trade secrets,
why does like for me it's
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you know, I would sort of think, well,
it's only got to sort of shoot
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through this,
you know, this computer thing.
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Why does it take so long
to get through there?
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So there's latency all over the place.
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Even if you've ever connected
your audio interface and you hear yourself
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like some computer software lets
you monitor yourself through the software,
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and when you do, you might hear a little
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like shadowing or a very quick, very,
very short echo of yourself.
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A musician would call it a flam.
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Or ProTools is a classic example of this,
because unless you use low
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latency monitoring in the native version,
you have a.
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Stream. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
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So then you're going to hear yourself
through all the buffering that occurs
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where your audio interface collects
the data.
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That's one process in the audio
interface computer.
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It hands it off to ProTools,
ProTools records it.
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Maybe ProTools even has to pass it
through a few plugins
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that you have on that channel.
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That's also more time to,
you know, to process those plugins.
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And then out
it goes back to your headphones.
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So every DAW has a usually
some sort of buffer.
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And it's the classic thing
where if you lower the buffer
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you're going to have less latency.
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It'll sound
like you're having less of a flam,
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but then you're going to make it
less stable because the computer
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has less time to apply to do
all these processes that it needs to.
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And if it can't get them all done in time,
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depending on how the software handles it,
it might just stop what it's doing
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and throw an error message up and say,
oh, I had an error,
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or it might not throw
the error message up,
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but it might make all the audio
sound like garbage.
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It just depends on how the software
decides to handle that state.
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So there's time it takes just locally
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to get the audio into your computer
and then into the software,
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be it Pro Tools or Source Connect or Zoom
or whatever it is.
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It has to digitize the audio
so it has a converted from a voltage to
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to a digital signal,
and then has to take that digital signal,
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get it into the computer software,
into the computer software.
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The computer software has to do something
with it.
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EQ compression, who knows.
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In the case of Source Connect,
what it's doing is
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it's taking that audio data,
which is a lot of audio data,
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and it's putting a
with a data compression on it.
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That's not like audio compression
in terms of dynamic range.
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It's compressing the audio to remove
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what it knows
you can't hear as a human, so that it can
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then send less data without losing
audio quality across the internet.
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So that time it takes to compress
the audio, data wise takes,
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only a few milliseconds.
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You know, 20 milliseconds
actually, or something.
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I think it might be less.
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I think it's 20 milliseconds
to compress it and decompress it.
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The real time
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that, no pun intended that occurs is in
hauling it over the internet.
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So there's a few other steps
that connect has to take before
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it gets it on the internet.
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It then has to take chunks
of those of that audio
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and has to chop it up
into what's called the packet.
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Think of that as like
has to put the audio in a box
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so that that box can be
sent over the internet.
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Because the internet doesn't work
in continuous streams of data,
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it works in packets or chunks of data.
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So you have to take your audio.
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That's rather continuous,
chop it up into chunks or packets,
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and then send those packets across
the internet, receive those packets.
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And so when you receive the packets,
you have to have another buffer
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because you need to make sure
that you get all those packets in order.
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When you start sending them out,
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you don't know how they're going
to go across the internet.
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And sometimes some of them
might take a slightly different route
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depending on how the internet,
the internet's, self deterministic,
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how it decides to deliver
data from point A to point B,
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so the buffer on the receiving side
is what the
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what gives the system time to make sure
that it has all the packets in order
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so that it can play them out
without a hiccup or a drop out,
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and then it receives all those packets,
it gets them in order,
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plays them out, decompresses them,
and then reverses everything.
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So it decompresses that makes them
the big string of audio hands that,
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to your audio software
that's playing it out.
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Again, in this case, it's
sort of connect off to the audio card,
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which has a little small buffer in it,
and then out to your headphones.
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So and so all of that, depending on
where you are, it can take a varied amount
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of time, anywhere from 300 milliseconds
to possibly around a half second or.
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So with, with the internet,
because we always
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assume is like point A to point B,
and that's it.
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There's nothing in between.
But it doesn't work that way, does it?
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Because sometimes it'll veer off it off
some other direction.
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Right.
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So there's all the way the internet works
is there's these many different series.
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Yeah. I don't know.
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It's there's many, many, many different
internet service providers out there.
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And they all do
what's called peer together.
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So what makes the internet work
is that all
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providers on the internet
have to peer with each other.
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And this is where you get your issues
with net neutrality and whatnot,
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because they should all deal
with each other's
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data with the same priority,
but they don't necessarily do that.
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They really give all of each other
the lowest priority technically.
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So for example, AT&T, if it has data
from its own network, it's going to pass
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that data to the next hop before it passes
data from, say, T-Mobile or Verizon.
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So the internet's built off
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of these many, many different providers
in the in the United States,
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you have what's called the tier one or,
you know, tier one providers.
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And usually at some point,
if you're connecting from one carrier
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to another, at some point
you end up going down
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all the way down to a tier
one provider and back up,
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so many local carriers
might be many tiers up from a tier one.
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But in theory, if you and your connection
partner were on AT&T, if AT&T was doing
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everything really perfectly,
the data would never leave AT&T network.
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That's not to say it doesn't hop across
many different nodes on AT&T network.
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So AT&T also would peer with itself.
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You know, you're in New York.
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The person you're connecting
with is in, say LA.
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Your signal might go
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probably down through Texas,
through some of various servers
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and, you know, like Houston
and maybe over in Colorado or New Mexico.
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And eventually it's just sort of
hopscotching across the country
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from one peering point to the other
until it gets to the end endpoint.
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So with with source connect the just
source elements where your service based.
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So we have relay servers.
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So normally source connect
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first going to try to create
what's called a peer to peer connection
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which AT&T or the provider
would figure out that route for you.
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But if your firewalls
can't trust each other,
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then you have to have the data coming
from a trusted point.
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And that would be our servers.
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So we have servers throughout the globe.
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I forget exactly where at this point,
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because we've expanded, but we at least at
one point had two in Europe,
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I think three
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in the United States and one in Asia
at least.
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Yeah.
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Those were that was in the pandemic.
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We had like 5 or 6 points.
I think we have more now.
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But if we like I'm just thinking
like, for instance, if I'm sitting here,
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where I'm in Victoria in Australia
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and I'm connecting with Rob in Sydney,
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with which service do I pass through
to get to Sydney from here?
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Would I go overseas? You might.
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You might go all the way to Singapore
I think is where I think are
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apex servers are
I think they're in the Singapore area.
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So if you were connecting peer
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to peer, your connection might never leave
Australia.
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The servers serve two purposes.
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One is a meet and greet.
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So you both log in to the server
and you have no idea where each other are.
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And Robbo sends a message to Andrew
that says, hey, I want to connect.
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That message goes to the server and the
server says, oh, I know where Andrew is.
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I'll send that message to Andrew.
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Robert wants to connect.
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Andrew accepts.
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Then it's going to basically give up all
the information about Robert's location,
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and it will try to make that
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connection peer to peer,
which might take, as I call it, the birds.
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As the bird flies through the internet,
the shortest path.
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That's what the internet should do
naturally,
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should make a peer to peer connection.
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If it can't,
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then you might see Source Connect,
say switching over to Source Stream.
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At that point, you guys would both
be going through Singapore,
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which technically adds latency
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because now you both
have to go all the way
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to Singapore
and back to talk to each other. Right?
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But the only reason why that would be
happening is to satisfy a firewall
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or security issue.
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Not because it's actually technically
better to add this mileage
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to the connection.
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So you're not always
going through our servers.
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We try to always find the shortest path.
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So then okay,
so now we know what causes it.
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How can we deal with it.
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So Source Connect three
you would have your ports forwarded.
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And that would very much guarantee
that you'd get a peer to peer connection.
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If both sides have their ports forwarded
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you're going to get a peer
to peer connection
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as long as you don't have that user stream
checkbox selected.
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Which would force it to use the streaming
server again.
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That's the best way.
00:13:04
But port forwarding has just
become untenable for a number of reasons.
00:13:09
One of the biggest reasons
is especially with the NBN,
00:13:13
I've seen this
and really with more and more countries,
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in the United States,
if you have a cellular connection,
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you're not going
00:13:21
to get an internet connection that puts
you directly on the public internet
00:13:25
and most of the internet connections
that the NBN provides,
00:13:28
as far as I've noticed, do not put you
directly on the public internet,
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so you can't do port forwarding
unless you have a direct connection
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to the public internet.
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If you don't have a direct connection
to the public internet, basically
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what you have is an internet service
provider that corrals all their users
00:13:44
into one massive little private network,
and then lets them all
00:13:48
get to the public internet through one
point of presence, essentially.
00:13:53
And they save money,
they save IP addresses this way and costs.
00:13:57
So you can think of it, the difference
of living in a city directly on the grid,
00:14:02
or living in the little community
00:14:04
where all the houses
have all their private roads.
00:14:06
But to get out to the road anywhere else
besides the group of houses,
00:14:10
you have to go through that one road
that puts you on the public road
00:14:14
compared to the HOA.
00:14:17
So most
00:14:17
internet service providers are sticking
everyone B inside their HOA now.
00:14:21
Therefore, you can't do port forwarding
and port forwarding is a pain in the butt.
00:14:25
Usually.
00:14:26
Source CNet can try to figure its way
out of those networks and still establish
00:14:32
a port, a peer to peer connection,
even without a port forward.
00:14:36
But it's not guaranteed,
because a lot has to do with.
00:14:39
Yeah, it gets really technical,
but essentially a really strong firewall.
00:14:44
A router would realize that it's
00:14:47
having a conversation with our server
and that's using a port.
00:14:51
And then Robbo comes in and says, hey,
let me send data in to Andrew
00:14:54
on that same port.
00:14:56
And a good firewall would say, Yeah.
00:14:58
See you. Later.
00:14:59
I'm not fallen for that.
00:15:00
Like,
like you're not the person I'm talking to.
00:15:03
Whereas a weaker
firewall would let us kind of like,
00:15:06
stick our foot in the door and then
let Rob go in through that same port.
00:15:10
There's advantages
to those weak firewalls,
00:15:12
but there's also,
of course, obviously disadvantages.
00:15:16
So ultimately
00:15:17
it's these days,
you know, compared to the early 2000s,
00:15:21
it's just not possible
to port forward the world anymore.
00:15:25
And so the whole service has gotten
00:15:28
more expensive
00:15:29
to provide for these reasons,
because you have to rely on a whole global
00:15:32
network of servers, even more
so to be able to make all this work.
00:15:38
But yeah,
that's how it establishes its connection.
00:15:41
And you don't know, like,
you could have a situation where
00:15:45
two people who live in the same city
because of the firewall
00:15:48
as they can't connect with each other,
00:15:50
and even though they're only one house
away from each other,
00:15:53
might have to bounce
through a relay server,
00:15:56
it's hundreds of miles away
from the two of them.
00:15:59
But not ideal, but sort of.
00:16:01
That's how it goes.
00:16:03
So it's connect
four does a pretty good job, right?
00:16:05
Well, it doesn't need port
forwarding anymore and it has a much more.
00:16:09
It has a larger system of global
servers to get through. And
00:16:14
yeah.
00:16:14
So in the sense it's better
because it doesn't rely on port
00:16:17
forwarding so much and it's a little bit
more intelligent about Source connect
00:16:20
three sometimes would end up
in a situation where it,
00:16:25
for example, there's a system called UPnP
or it's called Universal
00:16:29
Plug and Play, and that's
where the software asks for a port.
00:16:33
And then the router opens up that port
for the software, which is great.
00:16:38
But then what people do
is they get service from say,
00:16:42
Comcast Internet, and then they go
over to BestBuy and they buy a Euro router
00:16:47
and they hook up this Wi-Fi thing
to their whole house.
00:16:51
So what they've done is
they've put a router inside of a router,
00:16:53
they've basically created
the turducken of networks.
00:16:56
And you have firewalls inside of firewalls
literally.
00:17:00
Or you know, so UPnP says, hey,
you have a port, but it doesn't know
00:17:04
about the next router layer
outside of that, which blocks the port.
00:17:08
And source connect
doesn't know about that.
00:17:10
So then Source Connect doesn't know
at least first connect three wasn't
00:17:13
as quick
or good about figuring out like, oh,
00:17:16
I don't really have UPnP,
I don't really have a port.
00:17:20
I thought,
I have a port, and that's where,
00:17:23
so sometimes you would have
00:17:25
those connections that didn't work
as fluidly, and you'd have to tell it
00:17:28
to switch over to source stream source
connect four is a little bit.
00:17:32
It's a lot better about figuring out
when when it needs to switch over.
00:17:37
What about Wi-Fi boosters like,
you know, I've got in this house
00:17:40
because the modem is actually
in the studio here, which is not.
00:17:44
Typically add a layer.
00:17:45
So some of them add a layer
or some of them don't.
00:17:48
It depends on how they're set up.
00:17:51
George, you'd actually know
more about those I think, than I do,
00:17:54
but sometimes they they literally
present themselves as your first router
00:17:58
is 1921681.1 and the internet boosters
00:18:01
1921682.1.
00:18:04
That change in that second
00:18:05
number is a whole nother network layer
that's called the subnet.
00:18:10
And now you've.
00:18:11
Yeah. Shit complicated.
There's new router.
00:18:14
Well there's modern routers
now that have mesh
00:18:18
Wi-Fi router, mesh Wi-Fi extenders.
00:18:22
And the nice thing about mesh stuff
is they do extend the same IP
00:18:25
address across your home.
00:18:28
But they have to
be they all have to work together, right?
00:18:30
You can't just.
00:18:31
And the mesh has to be your thing,
but you have to hook up
00:18:34
your internet connection
directly to the head unit of the mesh.
00:18:38
If not the whole.
00:18:39
If not, the whole mesh becomes a layer.
00:18:42
Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
00:18:43
It's yeah, it's it gets messy quick.
00:18:46
Even in my little 800 square foot
apartment I have, I have a router,
00:18:50
a power over
Ethernet extender to go to the living room
00:18:54
which is ten feet away,
but our house is made out of chicken wire.
00:18:56
Yeah.
00:18:58
The entire thing is a Faraday cage, right?
00:19:00
And that goes out to the living room,
and then it goes
00:19:03
from there to the kitchen to another Poe.
00:19:08
Oh, no.
00:19:08
It goes through, through the walls.
00:19:10
And then it goes from there to the kitchen
to another to the other Poe.
00:19:14
Then it goes to another network
extender out there,
00:19:16
which is on a different subnet, completely
to get to my webcam out in the garage.
00:19:22
Right.
00:19:23
And that's the kind of thing
you have to do sometimes.
00:19:25
But if your network is, for example,
there's one brand of router called Eero,
00:19:31
not necessarily my favorite,
but they are friendly to use.
00:19:34
The, let me let me make one complaint
about know
00:19:37
the only place you can manage
that thing is on your stupid cell world.
00:19:41
Oh, wow.
00:19:42
Okay. Yeah. So annoying.
00:19:44
That's what I don't like.
00:19:45
And I think they do it
for security reasons.
00:19:47
It's easier to secure it.
00:19:48
Probably over a mobile.
00:19:50
It makes it really hard
to tech support for people.
00:19:53
It is really a nuisance. Yeah.
00:19:55
For you guys to help somebody on an Eero
and have to talk them through
00:19:59
how to do it. On their own
while talking to them on their phone.
00:20:01
It's not nearly. Yes.
00:20:02
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:03
You set up a. Screen share
and then you're like, wait.
00:20:05
You're like, oh, screen trainer computer,
let me jump in your router.
00:20:08
Zero.
00:20:08
You're like,
oh God, okay, pick up your cell phone.
00:20:11
What do you see? Oh I. Don't know.
00:20:13
It says router.
00:20:13
It doesn't say router.
No it says it's supposed to say router.
00:20:16
I don't see it because half the time
they don't even look.
00:20:19
Oh fine. Oh now I see it.
Three minutes later. Yeah.
00:20:22
Like yeah.
00:20:23
Yeah I haven't got a year. I said, what
are you talking about? That wasn't me.
00:20:27
Okay. Yes.
00:20:29
I mean you want to look for like Synology
or Ubiquity.
00:20:32
Ubiquity is great ones. Yeah I like.
00:20:34
Like not that expensive and really,
really reliable and easy to configure.
00:20:38
But yes, you got to be really careful
with that stuff.
00:20:41
It can slow down your whole network.
00:20:43
Especially the ones that go Wi-Fi
to Wi-Fi.
00:20:45
So one of the things about the extenders
I have a set of ubiquiti unify routers
00:20:50
and they're Wi-Fi hotspots,
but they are meant
00:20:54
to be connected
to each other through Ethernet.
00:20:58
Yeah.
00:20:58
And therefore, because if not,
what you have is like, anything
00:21:02
that's wireless has more latency
than anything that is wired.
00:21:06
And all these things
that are wirelessly extending things,
00:21:09
you have both the transmit,
the the receive and the transmit
00:21:13
latency that you're adding to it
because you're basically asking it to be,
00:21:18
access point and, receive
00:21:20
point wirelessly at the same time.
00:21:23
It's, you know, it's being both ends of it
simultaneously.
00:21:26
I bought years ago, the, Apple AirPods.
00:21:30
So they, you know, they plug into the plug
in the wall and then fire off Wi-Fi.
00:21:35
So basically, my setup is like an Ethernet
cable connected to the modem in here.
00:21:39
Underground, then into the house.
00:21:42
And then there's a whole bunch of Ethernet
plugs all through the house.
00:21:46
Nice, nice. Yeah.
00:21:48
That's what happens
when you build your own house.
00:21:50
Yeah, definitely. Exactly.
00:21:53
Yeah.
00:21:54
Yeah.
00:21:55
Because because the power over the
or the Ethernet over the power system
00:21:59
and I've seen mixed, mixed results
with those things.
00:22:02
Yeah.
00:22:03
Like they,
they don't they slow things down.
00:22:06
I think that we talk about the latency
on the, on the computer
00:22:09
and where the delay between
the add converter to the computer to it.
00:22:13
And so I was getting that. Yeah.
00:22:15
All of that.
I tried going over that at the beginning.
00:22:18
ProTools. Yeah. ProTools
native in how it's.
00:22:20
Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:21
Like that really matters
for people playing in sync.
00:22:24
Right. Like mainly music.
00:22:26
Like if you're trying to play virtual
instruments, synthesizers,
00:22:30
all sorts of layers and have everything
line up so you don't have to manually.
00:22:34
Or if you want to. Right. Yeah. To vision.
Well yeah.
00:22:36
I mean like like
00:22:37
like one thing to be really
00:22:38
clear on is like what is latency
that matters and doesn't matter.
00:22:41
So if you're looking at lip lip sync
you can have a little bit of tolerance
00:22:45
there.
00:22:46
20 milliseconds isn't going to make
something look out of sync,
00:22:49
but 20 milliseconds at the right musical
tempo
00:22:52
is the difference
between a good player and a bad player.
00:22:57
Right.
00:22:57
I always used to laugh at these systems
00:22:59
that claim to let you play music
over the internet and when you would.
00:23:03
Oh, go, go companies. Yeah, listen.
00:23:05
Excuse me, but bullshit.
00:23:07
So you read the manual and at some point
they would say things like, you know, once
00:23:11
you get it all hooked up and you've driven
all your drivers
00:23:13
down to the lowest latency,
so everything's as unstable as possible,
00:23:18
you will get used to playing with latency
00:23:20
and it works better with slower
tempo music.
00:23:24
Like it works.
00:23:24
Better
if the other band members are in your.
00:23:26
Yeah, yeah, it works. Better
if no one has a sense of.
00:23:29
Time. What about Ringo Starr?
00:23:31
Right?
00:23:31
Ringo Starr's in-built latency gave him
a name is one of the world's
00:23:35
greatest drummers because he's naturally,
let's call it feel.
00:23:37
Yeah. And his grandmother
made him learn to get right.
00:23:40
But it took him
longer to get to the snare drum
00:23:43
because of the way
he learned to play the drums,
00:23:45
and that gave him that natural
swing that everyone goes, oh,
00:23:47
George of stuff
like Ringo is a fucking genius.
00:23:50
Yeah, yeah, no,
but it was like it was just. A but.
00:23:53
Inbuilt latency that he wasn't.
00:23:55
But here's another point of latency.
00:23:57
Why do orchestras have conductors?
00:24:01
Because
00:24:02
again, at the right tempo,
the amount of time it takes
00:24:04
for the double basses
on one side of the orchestra to hear
00:24:09
and see what the percussionist is doing on
the other side of the orchestra
00:24:12
is a musical time value.
00:24:15
It might be a 64th note,
00:24:17
but it's their speed of light conductor
waving their hands.
00:24:21
Now you can get everyone to play in sync,
but you know it's true.
00:24:24
Two people
sitting on either end of a football field
00:24:27
at the speed of sound
cannot play in sync with each other.
00:24:30
Yeah. It's impossible.
Yeah, yeah, I remember that. We did that.
00:24:33
We did that, experiment at school.
We we took a start.
00:24:36
Has gone up to one of the ovals at school.
00:24:38
And, you know, we all stood down one end
00:24:39
and the teacher was down
the other end with the started down.
00:24:42
And you saw that you saw the smoke
before you heard the sound.
00:24:44
Yeah. Well,
that's sort of. Exactly where I saw it.
00:24:48
I don't like to say Pink Floyd.
00:24:49
I saw Dave Gilmore play in Soldier
Field here in Chicago,
00:24:53
and he played money,
and he had the whole thing out in quad.
00:24:56
So doing church, bom bom bom bom,
00:25:00
and each
beat would go to a different speaker.
00:25:02
Except I was about 20ft from one speaker
00:25:06
and about a 1500 feet
from another speaker.
00:25:10
So that whole thing sounded like boom,
chicka bom bom bom bom boom chicka boom.
00:25:15
Yeah.
00:25:15
What if you want a good lesson in latency,
sit down with one of the guys that mics
00:25:19
those stadium events because like, you're
dealing with that day in and day out.
00:25:24
Yeah, absolutely.
00:25:25
I actually had a totally different venue.
00:25:27
I watched a geeky video from this
great podcast called 20Hz.
00:25:33
They really it's a great show, by the way.
00:25:34
Free audio people.
00:25:35
Check out 20Hz.
00:25:37
And the gentleman,
the gentleman, the host.
00:25:39
The show did.
It's doing a video series now.
00:25:42
And he walked the Disney property.
00:25:45
Disneyland.
00:25:46
And the guy he was that took him on
the tour is an expert
00:25:50
on everything Disney technology, you know,
00:25:54
and he shows the guy where
all the hidden speakers are on the mall.
00:25:57
You know, as you walk down Main Street
where the speakers are located,
00:26:01
where the control, you know, control
towers are, where the audio mixer sitting.
00:26:06
But what was really cool,
00:26:07
what's relevant to the conversation,
is talking about how they are masters
00:26:10
at controlling the delays of sound
between systems, so that anywhere you are,
00:26:16
you never hear an overlapping echo
from another zone.
00:26:20
Well, yes.
00:26:21
Even to the point when they have parades,
their old Electric Light parade,
00:26:25
which is so famous and fun, you know,
they had the speakers on the parade car.
00:26:29
But nowadays
00:26:30
the technology, the system sounds,
the sound is so much more sophisticated.
00:26:34
So these speakers
all the way down the entire parade route,
00:26:37
and there's beacons and every single float
00:26:40
telling the system where the float is,
00:26:43
so it knows where the music for that float
should be playing.
00:26:47
And and what? See,
you know why it should be said to.
00:26:49
And so as the thing travels down,
that's so cool.
00:26:52
No matter where you are,
you're hearing the music for that float.
00:26:55
But it's coming from,
you know, fixed speaker locations
00:26:59
and a lot of the speakers are hidden,
but now they have speaker towers up
00:27:03
because you can only hide so many speakers
nowadays.
00:27:06
They and they always
put them by the trees.
00:27:09
So there'll be a nice tree
and then next to it, a big speaker tower.
00:27:12
But it's kind of disguised,
you don't really know.
00:27:15
Looks like a. Business or something.
00:27:17
Yeah.
00:27:17
Say what you will about Disney,
but they're geniuses at heart.
00:27:20
Are you sure? I mean, just incredible.
00:27:23
You know, the audio on and tronic,
all that stuff is just next level.
00:27:27
But just talking about latency.
00:27:29
It's the most when you really twist
your head around what's going on.
00:27:33
And what's so remarkable
is they do it so well.
00:27:37
And we all know this about sound, right?
00:27:38
You only know it's bad.
00:27:41
You only
notice audio when it's fucking bad, right?
00:27:44
It's the most like unsung hero of tech.
00:27:47
Because when it's good I mean,
unless you're somewhat of a enthusiast,
00:27:52
I'm like, oh, this sounds great, but
most of the time you don't say anything.
00:27:56
But when it's
when it's. Bad, you're hiding. It.
00:27:58
You hate it.
00:27:59
So I think George Lucas line
sound is 50% of the picture.
00:28:03
Yeah.
00:28:03
Yeah yeah yeah.
00:28:04
Or video
without sound is just surveillance. Oh.
00:28:08
Yeah.
00:28:08
Yeah, I like that.
00:28:10
Yeah,
I like that. Talk about video and latency.
00:28:13
Years and years and years ago,
00:28:14
I used to do a TV show
which was live on a Friday night,
00:28:17
the music show,
and it was before, Hi-Fi television.
00:28:22
So the big thing was
you had an FM radio station, and you did
00:28:26
a thing called a simulcast
00:28:28
for anyone under 4515, somebody would have
no idea what I'm doing.
00:28:33
But anyway, so you had the audio
coming out of your Hi-Fi speakers
00:28:37
and the pictures on your television,
so I should have the show.
00:28:41
But the problem was
because we had to rely on
00:28:44
the control room
back at the TV network to play the videos.
00:28:48
So I had on my chair under the right,
a button.
00:28:52
But I had to work on, I think it was a
00:28:55
2 or 3 second roll from memory.
00:28:58
So when I'm doing my spiel,
I had to work out,
00:29:01
you know, backwards 2
or 3 seconds before I finished
00:29:05
so I could press the button, which alerted
the guys in the control room to rotate
00:29:08
at a time. The rotate,
because in a three second roll.
00:29:11
No way. They roll in and then.
00:29:14
It's like the engine room in the ship,
you know, you push the throttle forward
00:29:17
and then the downstairs,
the light comes on full steam, you.
00:29:20
Know, and then you'd fire up this I used.
00:29:22
To have to deal with,
00:29:23
with the first version of Source Live,
like back in 2014,
00:29:27
the latency to get a broadcast
that wasn't peer to peer,
00:29:32
it would take like three seconds.
00:29:34
So I'd talk to my clients and say,
okay, well,
00:29:36
here's that thing that you asked for.
00:29:38
It's, you know, like, I lower the audio,
I lower the music, I raise that
00:29:42
I got rid of that pop.
00:29:43
I hit play there, that play button is
I just slam the button
00:29:47
and say a few more things
and then it would play.
00:29:49
So hopefully when I said, here
it is, it would start.
00:29:52
But I really had hit play like a second
and a half or two seconds earlier,
00:29:56
trying to make it.
00:29:57
Seem like it's like my Subaru
trying to pass a car on the freeway with.
00:29:59
This.
00:30:02
I'm like, I think I'm going to pass
this guy in a minute.
00:30:04
I'll slam the throttle.
00:30:06
For the 1980s turbo car.
00:30:09
Well, you hit the throttle.
00:30:11
That's right.
00:30:12
At turbo.
00:30:12
Lag. Yeah, they should call it
turbo latency.
00:30:14
Yeah.
00:30:15
It wasn't.
00:30:16
It was a turbo lag, wasn't it?
That's what they call it.
00:30:19
Yeah. Turbo.
00:30:19
Yeah, yeah.
00:30:20
I tell you what, this does discussion
does shine a really good light on it.
00:30:23
1996 or 97
00:30:27
would have been I was still at triple M
and we did a triple cast right?
00:30:31
Yeah, I remember the triple cast.
00:30:33
There was an Australian band called
Boom Crash Opera who was still around.
00:30:36
Now they're actually touring at them.
00:30:37
I remember them right.
00:30:38
Well, we had, a TV show, a national
TV show called hey, Hey, It's Saturday,
00:30:43
which was on it's Saturday night,
and it was like a national icon.
00:30:47
So we got boom.
00:30:48
So the triple M network
lined up with, hey, hey, it's Saturday,
00:30:51
and we did a triple cast.
00:30:52
We had a band member
in each state, each capital city.
00:30:56
So I think Dale rider was a triple
M in Sydney with me.
00:31:00
And there was the guitarist in Adelaide,
the drummer was somewhere,
00:31:03
blah blah blah blah blah.
00:31:04
And it was when the internet
was first starting up and they played live
00:31:10
on TV, on triple M and on the internet,
so you could tune in and listen to them
00:31:15
playing on the internet,
and they were all in a different state.
00:31:17
So we're talking back then
00:31:20
dial up connections, all that rubbish.
00:31:23
Wait wait wait wait wait.
00:31:24
The musicians were in three
different positions.
00:31:27
Were all those band members 4 or 5 in boom
fresh?
00:31:30
Five? Oh, pleasant had gone by then,
so I would have been four. I think.
00:31:34
I suppose it might be.
00:31:36
I'll tell you what it's on,
but you can watch it.
00:31:38
It's on YouTube if you want to go
and watch it, I'll stick the link.
00:31:42
They had to have been playing to a click
that was synchronized
00:31:44
with the central point.
There's no effing way.
00:31:47
Don't forget they were listening to the TV
feed to hear each other.
00:31:50
They weren't listening to each other
across the internet, but it was correct.
00:31:54
They're all listen is something that has.
00:31:55
It was on all sides, right? Right,
I tell you.
00:31:57
Broadcast,
terrestrial terrestrial broadcast.
00:32:01
But still I mean, you know.
00:32:02
Yeah. Back then yeah it was a big thing.
00:32:05
That's pretty cool. Well, you were there.
00:32:06
You were there. Rob.
00:32:07
Oh. When,
guild off used to come and do drive
00:32:11
in the.
00:32:13
Yeah.
00:32:14
And he,
I got a call from a record company.
00:32:16
Go, girl, I was talking to her,
and I said, what are you up to?
00:32:19
Some at lunch with Lee Amalia from
Hothouse Flowers went, oh, he's Irish.
00:32:24
Why don't you come in
and you can get on there with Geldof?
00:32:28
So he did,
and then they end up doing a song member.
00:32:30
They did do the live song,
00:32:31
which was a Tim Buckley song,
and I wish I could remember what it was,
00:32:34
but Liam Amalia played keyboards and sang.
00:32:38
Charlie Musselwhite was on harmonica.
00:32:41
Can't remember than a guy's name
who's playing guitar.
00:32:45
And I think Geldof
sort of wandered it out,
00:32:46
playing the bow role
or some weird shit, but, But
00:32:50
Liam, Amalia, the headphones didn't work
and we were going live to hear.
00:32:54
So he played the
00:32:55
keyboards, he couldn't hear the keyboard,
and he sang.
00:32:59
Oh, wow.
00:32:59
But he played the keyboard.
00:33:01
Didn't miss a note
without even hearing it. Yes.
00:33:04
That's somebody that was amazing, Mr.
00:33:06
Beethoven. Some of those guys.
00:33:08
Yeah.
00:33:08
I mean, my let
I have one last latency story too,
00:33:11
because it ties into radio again
when I did the Eagles football,
00:33:15
broadcasts, we were simulcasting
because it was television,
00:33:19
but we were on the radio. Right.
00:33:22
And it's not technically a simulcast,
but the fans in Philly
00:33:26
and in the Philadelphia area
wanted to hear our announcer, you know.
00:33:30
Yeah, they want to hear the hometown
announcer. Right.
00:33:32
So it's very popular to turn down
the television and turn up the radio.
00:33:36
Right. Talk about sync problems.
00:33:39
What often happened was
we were ahead of the broadcast.
00:33:43
Yeah. Right, right.
00:33:44
And so you would get calls from the fans
calling in the station saying.
00:33:49
You guys are ahead of the TV, man.
00:33:51
And then we'd have to call in
to engineering.
00:33:53
And they had a delay control,
you know, back at the.
00:33:56
Yeah, at the station
they'd add a second 2 or 3 of delay
00:34:01
so that when you lose to the game
because you see when you hear male go,
00:34:04
it's just, you know, fumble
and the guy's still running
00:34:07
and they're like, it's
going to be a fumble. Oh shit.
00:34:10
Oh you bet. Yeah.
00:34:13
Yeah.
00:34:13
So you would have to deal with that,
you know. And that.
00:34:16
Well if. You watch it.
00:34:16
If you watch film coverage,
you'll see that all the time
00:34:20
because they'll, they'll cross the
like this the garage of whatever team.
00:34:24
And you see a screen in the background
00:34:26
which is showing something
you saw about four seconds ago.
00:34:29
And then it will turn to the guys in the,
you know, in the in the garage
00:34:33
on the pit lane, two. More places
where latency comes up.
00:34:36
Number one, you buy these in house
like Sony's speakers,
00:34:41
and they are having to synchronize
the delay
00:34:43
throughout your house
so that you walk upstairs and downstairs
00:34:47
and you get somewhat
of a continuous experience
00:34:51
without getting an echoey sound
when you're standing between two zones.
00:34:57
That's one.
00:34:57
And that's very hard to do,
especially because you're dealing
00:35:00
with physical space.
00:35:03
At some point
you cannot actually compensate for this.
00:35:05
You can.
00:35:05
Only one thing to be really clear about.
00:35:07
You can only compensate for latency.
00:35:09
From a point of perspective, and you can
only compensate latency by adding latency.
00:35:14
There's no time travel like people have
latency compensation like. You.
00:35:19
Can't speed it up to.
00:35:20
Time travel yet.
00:35:21
Yeah. You can't you can't go back in time.
00:35:24
So that's one place.
00:35:25
The other thing
that's interesting with latency,
00:35:28
you might remember with landline
00:35:32
phone calls, they were quicker.
00:35:35
And now everyone is so used to latency
00:35:38
on the phone network with cell phones
that the funniest thing
00:35:43
that I've realized, actually,
is that recently I've been on a few phone
00:35:46
calls and Source Connect
beat the phone call.
00:35:49
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
00:35:51
Which was really interesting.
00:35:53
Well, everyone
now is this culturally used to much higher
00:35:57
latency conversations
than we used to in the 80s with
00:36:02
wired telephones across the whole world.
00:36:04
Except when you were doing.
The you're going. Through these.
00:36:06
I can still remember though, back in
the 70s and 80s, because I'm fucking old.
00:36:12
You know,
you be doing an international call.
00:36:13
It'd be like, how are you?
00:36:16
Are you there? Yeah. Good.
00:36:17
Oh, no. I'm sorry.
00:36:19
And then everyone's talking over
00:36:20
one another and it's costing
loads of money and.
00:36:22
Yeah, yeah.
00:36:24
God, Jesus.
It's like a phone call. Oh, yeah.
00:36:26
I a half hour interview
at a radio station.
00:36:28
It cost the station,
like 200 bucks or something. Yeah, yeah.
00:36:31
I see end lines go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:36:33
Fucking. Oh yeah yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.
00:36:35
God forbid someone forgot to hang up
the damn ISDN box.
00:36:39
Over the weekend, we we did that
when we were just, testing Source Connect,
00:36:43
and we were doing some latency tests
because aptX for example, is a codec.
00:36:48
We were talking about compression
and decompression, and we used to have
00:36:52
a version of Source Connect that use
the aptX codec or people call it aptX X.
00:36:56
And now aptX is used a lot with Bluetooth
for doing your surround speakers
00:37:00
because it's it most codecs.
00:37:04
A codec is the thing that compresses
the data and makes it less data
00:37:07
to transmit.
00:37:08
Most codecs do this
by figuring out what you can't hear.
00:37:12
Is a human. But aptX didn't use,
00:37:16
perceptual coding.
00:37:17
It used, linear adaptive linear
00:37:20
PCM or something I think had ad, I forget.
00:37:23
But anyways, it was much, much faster.
00:37:25
What would take most codecs around
20 milliseconds to encode decode?
00:37:29
I think aptX could do it
in four milliseconds. Wow.
00:37:33
So we were testing with the aptX ISDN box
and comparing it to Source Connect.
00:37:38
Connect it to California.
00:37:40
We had some pretty good results
00:37:42
and then we just went home
and it was the weekend.
00:37:45
Yeah.
00:37:46
And the aptX system would take
it wouldn't take two ISDN lines.
00:37:49
It would take four because it it couldn't
achieve as much of a compression ratio.
00:37:55
It was much faster.
00:37:56
Who didn't disconnect?
00:37:57
Robert I'm. Innocent.
00:38:01
The box didn't disconnect.
00:38:03
The the line, the,
00:38:06
Oops.
00:38:07
That was an expensive,
that was got to hang.
00:38:09
That was expensive.
00:38:10
That was that was almost $1 for that
one weekend.
00:38:14
Yeah.
00:38:15
Yeah, it happened to Miguel for our IP.
00:38:18
They left it open.
00:38:20
Yeah, yeah, nobody hung up.
00:38:21
The suit didn't hang up. Yeah.
00:38:23
And he he was the one that dialed in. Oh.
00:38:25
Which is not really protocol,
but for whatever reason.
00:38:29
Boom. He dialed in. And got he got nailed.
00:38:31
He got the bill. Yeah. And he. Yeah.
00:38:34
My my, when when.
00:38:35
When I first set up the bridge,
I bought a, used my, ISDN box,
00:38:39
and it came from some radio station.
00:38:41
It was set up as a studio,
the transmitter link.
00:38:43
And it had a program in there that said,
if you disconnect,
00:38:46
like dial back
and get that connection back.
00:38:50
And I didn't know that,
I didn't clear the settings out.
00:38:53
And I put my new ISDN numbers in there,
and I did a bridge that dialed out.
00:38:57
And then like bridges over
and I disconnected or whatever.
00:39:01
And I got home and that was like 300 bucks
and that was just for like eight hours
00:39:06
or something or six hours
that the stupid thing dialed back.
00:39:10
The moral to the story is, if you've got
an ISDN box and you forget to hang up,
00:39:14
you need to go to a CVS store right now
because you're going to need it.
00:39:23
And that's the out
00:39:25
literally.
00:39:26
Well, that's the that's is at the end.
00:39:30
Both.
00:39:36
Well that was fun.
00:39:36
Is it a works.
00:39:38
In the pro audio suite thanks to
00:39:40
tribal and Austrian audio
recorded using Source Connect,
00:39:44
edited by Andrew Peters and mix by Robert
Good.
00:39:48
Your own audio issues,
just ask Rob Aucoin.
00:39:51
Tech support for George the Tech William.
00:39:53
Don't forget to subscribe
00:39:54
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00:39:58
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00:40:02
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