# Network Audio

**URL:** <https://discourse.zynthian.org/t/network-audio/4800>\
**Category:** Software\
**Created:** [October 9, 2020, 12:38pm UTC](https://discourse.zynthian.org/t/network-audio/4800 "2020-10-09T12:38:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 16

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**Author:** ![riban](https://discourse.zynthian.org/user_avatar/discourse.zynthian.org/riban/32/2331_2.png) [@riban](https://discourse.zynthian.org/u/riban)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 9:50am UTC](https://discourse.zynthian.org/t/network-audio/4800/16 "2020-12-06T09:50:22Z")

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Defo want to see network audio integrated as audio inputs and outputs for Zynthian routing. I did similar but chose NetJack for my experiments. I disregarded Zita for a reason that currently eludes me. It might have been something to doe with the amount of configuration, e.g. needing to configure all nodes. I was looking for something that would allow connection to available nodes. Something similar to Dante.

Regarding Internet connectivity, I worry that the current Internet infrastructure is insufficient to support baseband audio without significant disruption. The common approach currently is to use data reduction to transport audio between endpoints. I certainly see a future where high bandwidth, QoS protected routes are available to us mere mortals but am not sure we are there yet. For controlled environments like @wyleu describes (directly wired endpoints on closed or controlled network segments) this is very desirable. I am of course very interested to hear how Internet connected nodes behave, not just latency but also dropouts (xruns), latency variation (jitter / wow / flutter), physical distance between participants, etc. The laws of physics are there to be challenged but it may take a brain bigger than mine to bend or rewrite them! (I do try occasionally.)

Maybe we can add a hierarchical configuration for network audio which allows enabling of different protocols - but first we need it working.

@wyleu mentions failure mode. I found with NetJack that it could fail to a rather undesirable state which might be worked-around by monitoring and service control. I didn’t pursue that. I also had _interesting_ effects with variable latency where the audio actually pitch shifted. Funny but not fun.

I think we currently sit in the lab testing stage but it would be great to progress this. I am not confident we can get an international Christmas jamming session working but maybe next year…

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