Pairs of musicians were placed apart in isolated rooms and asked to clap a rhythm together. Each person monitored the other’s sound via headphones and microphone pickup was as close as possible. Time delay from source to listener was manipulated across trials. Trials were recorded and clap onset times were measured with an event detection algorithm. Longer delays produced increasingly severe tempo deceleration and shorter delays (< 11.5 ms) produced a modest, but surprising acceleration. The study’s goal is to characterize effects of delay on rhythmic accuracy and identify the region most conducive to ensemble playing. The results have implication for networked musical performance. Network delay is a function of transmission distance and / or internetworking (routing) delays. The findings suggest that sensitive ensemble performance can be supported over rather long paths (e.g., San Francisco to Denver at about 20 ms, oneway). The finding that moderate amounts of delay are beneficial to tempo stability seems, at first glance, counterintuitive. We discuss the observed effect. 1.

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The native time delay of audio transmission over high speed networks is used to create musical devices to play on and with the network. Different strategies that have been part of the practice of the Net vs. Net collective— a permanent network ensemble playing exclusively over wide area digital networks—are discussed. A tool to synchronize displaced musicians visually cue the performers and the audience. It also activates synchronized musical processes. The latency is used to create delay effects and reverbs embedded on the bidirectional path using feedback delay network filters. We also present a technique to play distributed rhythmic patterns over the network that are designed to sound different—with diverging rhythmic and phase structures—on each location. 1.

While MIDI is still the most viable music protocol, it is not appropriate for use in live networked music performances. We propose a network data format called MINI. It eliminates the disturbing arpeggio effect caused by network packet delay jitter, and yields smaller packets that can be further reduced by omitting marginal MIDI features. MIDI–MINI transcoding is transparent, and works with standard MIDI instruments. We present the MINI design rationale, protocol, and empirical performance results. 1.