ï~~TOWARDS THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A GENERIC
PLATFORM FOR NETWORKED MUSIC PERFORMANCE:
THE DIAMOUSES APPROACH
Chrisoula Alexandraki
Panayotis Koutlemanis
Petros Gasteratos
Nikolas Valsamakis
Technological Educational Institute of Crete
Rethymnon Branch
Department of Music Technology & Acoustics
Rethymnon, Crete, Greece
chrisoula@stef.teicrete.gr
ABSTRACT
DIAMOUSES is an ongoing research and development
project aiming at enabling a wide range of application
scenarios for networked music performance. Such
scenarios range from geographically distributed music
rehearsals to remote music master classes or
collaborative sessions for music improvisation and
jamming. Clearly, different application scenarios raise
different requirements in the supporting technological
infrastructure. For instance, current research in
networked music performance has entirely different
priorities than research in distant music learning.
However, the requirements in these cases are not
contradictory. Combining research achievements from
different areas will lead to the development of
infrastructures having a greater impact on virtual music
communities. The main objective of the DIAMOUSES
approach is to provide a generic platform which, in
addition to coping with the technical constraints in
communicating music through the network, will allow
for accommodating the specificities of various
collaboration practices required throughout different
music performance scenarios.
1. INTRODUCTION
According to a number of scientific articles ([7], [8]),
real-time audio streaming is one of the most intensive
applications in networking. However, since music is a
motivating and, at the same time, a challenging
application domain, various research and development
efforts have been invested in exploring appropriate
infrastructures for performing music through distant
locations. It has been reported [2] that the first
experiments in networked music begun as early as in the
late 1970s when the commercialisation of personal
computers in the United States began. However, at that
time, network infrastructures capable of efficiently
supporting networked music performance were not
available.
It appears that although a few research initiatives
quietly started around 2000, it's only the last couple of
Demosthenes Akoumianakis
Giannis Milolidakis
Technological Educational Institute of Crete
Faculty of Applied Technologies
Department of Applied Informatics & Multimedia
Heraklion, Crete, Greece
da@epp.teicrete.gr
years that there is a big burst of new systems supporting
networked music performance [3]. Undoubtedly, the
advent of the Intemrnet2 made the entire concept to
appear more feasible around 2000 and at the same time
the recent availability of reliable high-bandwidth
academic network backbones in Europe has allowed for
these research efforts to spread and become more widely
available. SoundWIRE [5] was one of the first research
projects in networked music performance. Other
initiatives are the Distributed Immersive Performance
experiments [6] and the more recent Soundjack software
[4]. These approaches are concerned with developing
lightweight software that focuses on achieving fast
exchange of high-quality audio streams. The audio
quality required in music performance is significantly
higher than in teleconferencing applications, therefore
requiring increased network bandwidth and eliminated
jitter and packet loss. Fast delivery of these streams, on
the other hand, demands for minimization of various
types of latencies (i.e. network, hardware and software
latencies) and in some cases synchronization of data
streams. The above outstanding research efforts have
initiated a variety of open perspectives in the area of
distributed music performance.
Recently, a number of alternative tools for remote
music performance have started to appear in a more
publicly available, community oriented context. Such
tools are for example the eJamming AUDiiO', the
Musigy2 and the NINJAM3 projects. The approach in
these projects is based on the Napster Music
Community4 paradigm, where the community oriented
task of peer-to-peer networks is 'music-making' instead
of 'music-sharing'.
In their majority, performers of conventional music
genres become skeptic when asked to collaboratively
perform from remote locations. Clearly, networked music
performance does not aim to substitute live stage
performances, on the contrary it aims at supporting
musicians when real co-presence is not possible and
'http://www.ejamming.com/
2 http://www.musigy.com/
3 http://www.ninjam.com/
4 http://www.napster.de/
0
