GuitarHero/RockBand fans... side project anyone?

[John Colvin]

On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 20:20:46 UTC, Joseph Rushton 
Wakeling wrote:
> On 12/12/13 19:52, John Colvin wrote:
>> Delay between people isn't really the problem, it's delay in 
>> hearing yourself
>> that's the killer.
>
> Think people listening to people they hear with delay for their 
> musical cues, and the people they are listening to listening to 
> _them_ for their musical cues, and the feedback effect that 
> might result ... :-)  You have to get used to the fact that the 
> right time to play may sound like the wrong time to play 
> relative to some other group spatially separated from you.

I don't doubt it's a problem, but at least in the orchestra or 
with acoustic instruments in general you have the luxury of 
having hand-ear synchronization. For an electric guitarist in the 
studio, you have actual latency between when you feel the pick 
strike in your hand and when you hear it in your ears, sometimes 
up to 64ms. It's a complete nightmare.

> By the same token, if everyone plays precisely with the 
> conductor, they don't actually play precisely together as far 
> as the audience is concerned, which is why professional 
> orchestras tend to play a bit behind the conductor's beat.

An interesting side-effect of this is in recordings of 
orchestras. In order to reconstruct the feel of the music from 
the audiences* perspective, you actually have to time-delay the 
different mics from different sections!

*but where in the audience? Decisions, decisions...