Ninjam

R/ninjam: A subreddit dedicated to musicians creating live music (in.near. real-time) with the software NINJAM, created by Cockos Incorporated. NINJAM Plug-in is a plug-in client for NINJAM. NINJAM is a program to allow people to make music together via the Internet. Every participant can hear every other participant. Each user can also tweak their personal mix to his or her liking. NINJAM is cross-platform, with clients available for Mac OS X and Windows.

NINJAM
[about] [download][public servers][music made with NINJAM][NINJAM forum]

What is NINJAM?

NINJAM is open source (GPL) software to allow people to make real music together via the Internet. Every participant can hear every other participant.Each user can also tweak their personal mix to his or her liking.NINJAM is cross-platform, with clients available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. REAPER (our digital audio workstation software for Windows and OS X) also includes NINJAM support (ReaNINJAM plug-in).

NINJAM uses compressed audio which allows it to work with any instrument or combination of instruments. You can sing, play a real piano, play a real saxophone, play a real guitar with whatever effects and guitar amplifier you want, anything. If your computer can record it, then you can jam with it (as opposed to MIDI-only systems that automatically preclude any kind of natural audio collaboration¹).

Since the inherent latency of the Internet prevents true realtime synchronizationof the jam², and playing with latency is weird (and often uncomfortable),NINJAM provides a solution by making latency (and the weirdness) much longer.

Latency in NINJAM is measured in measures, and that'swhat makes it interesting.

The NINJAM client records and streams synchronized intervals of musicbetween participants. Just as the interval finishes recording, it begins playing on everyone else's client.So when you play through an interval, you're playingalong with theprevious interval of everybody else, and they're playing along with yourprevious interval. If this sounds pretty bizarre, it sort of is, until youget used to it, then it becomes pretty natural. In many ways, it can be more forgiving than a normal jam, because mistakes propagate differently.

Part tool, part toy, NINJAM is designed with an emphasis on musical experimentation and expression.

How does NINJAM work?

NINJAM uses OGG Vorbis audio compression to compress audio, then streams it to a NINJAMserver, which can then stream it to the other people in your jam. This architecture requiresa server with adequate bandwidth, but has no firewall or NAT issues. OGG Vorbis is utilized for its great low bitrate characteristics and performance. Each user receives a copy of other users audio streams, allowing for each user to adjust the mix to their liking, as well as remix later. This uses more bandwidth than having a server encode a single stream, but has numerous benefits (including lower server CPU use and the client having the full multichannel data for later use).

NINJAM can also save all of the original uncompressed source material, for doing full quality remixes afterthe jam.
(1): While MIDI has many wonderful uses, it also has substantial limitations when working with real instruments.
(2): Limitations of note: sound hardware latency (>5ms), perceptual CODEC latency (>20ms), plus typical and theoretical network latency (>40ms).

Download NINJAM

Preferred client - REAPER:
REAPER is a Digital Audio Workstation for Windows, OS X and Linux that also provides native NINJAM support via the 'ReaNINJAM' plug-in, and allows you to use VST/VSTis/ReWire/MIDI hardware/etc with NINJAM. REAPER also can import NINJAM sessions directly for remixing/editing.

NINJAM Server:
The main requirement for running the server is outbound bandwidth. For example, a 4 person jam needs approximately 768kbps of outbound (and only 240kbps inbound) bandwidth, and a 8 person jam requires approximately 3mbps of outbound (and 600kbps inbound) bandwidth.

Ninjaman

Ninjam Reviews

A server setup guide is here.

NINJAM server v0.080 for Windows (64kb .zip)
NINJAM server v0.080 for macOS X (56kb .zip)
Linux: download server source via git and compile. For Debian/Ubuntu, eg:

NINJAM Source Code

git clone https://www-dev.cockos.com/ninjam/ninjam.git
Official GitHub mirror: github.com/justinfrankel/ninjam

Ninjam Mac

Also: Very Old, Original, and Obsolete NINJAM Clients

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