Sonifex AVN-GMCS Grandmaster Clocks Allow Long Distance Synchronization For Remote Musicians
In 2021, Peltrix, working with Audinate and the Blue Note Entertainment Group, carried out a brilliant and successful experiment using available off-the-shelf technology to synchronize 3 different sets of musicians hundreds of miles apart, so that they could play and improvise jazz together seamlessly.
Amit Peleg, CEO of Peltrix, wanted to offer corporate and entertainment clients a production quality solution for remote music production, so he used the slow pace of 2020-21 to explore solutions using Danteaudio over IP, connecting the 3 venues of Sony Hall in New York, the Howard Theatre in Washington DC and Studio Instrument Rentals in Nashville. Blue Note Entertainment is the home of Blue Note jazz, so Amit needed a solution that allowed the musicians in each location to monitor each other in real time, needing incredibly low latency to succeed.
The solution involved having a simple layer 3 network with each location having a different subnet. Amit used Sonifex AVN-GMCS grandmaster clocks in each location to receive GPS and then synchronize the PTPv2 IP network to an accuracy of less than 1 micro-second. The AVN-GMCS is a PTPv2 grandmaster clock for use with AoIP applications. PTPv2 (precision time protocol) is used to synchronize all the nodes within a network, with multiple units at multiple sites allowing WAN AoIP synchronization, performed simply and accurately, enabling sub micro second synchronization between all nodes.
Dante Domain Manager was used to configure the devices on the network. As new Dante AV products were being released during the project, Amit was able to add real time video for the musicians to monitor the other locations, as well as the audio. In the final solution, system latency was so low that the musicians were able to comfortably play together as if they were in the same room.
Please watch the video link for a fascinating description of the entire process – a masterclass in reducing latency throughout the signal chain and the due diligence carried out to provide a world-class live solution:
https://go.audinate.com/
