https://www.cockos.com/ninjam/

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NINJAM
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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
macOS, Linux, and Windows. REAPER (our digital audio workstation
software) also includes NINJAM support (ReaNINJAM plug-in).

[ninjamosx_] 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 collaboration^
1).

Since the inherent latency of the Internet prevents true realtime
synchronization of the jam^2, 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's what makes it
interesting.

The NINJAM client records and streams synchronized intervals of music
between participants. Just as the interval finishes recording, it
begins playing on everyone else's client. So when you play through an
interval, you're playing along with the previous interval of
everybody else, and they're playing along with your previous
interval. If this sounds pretty bizarre, it sort of is, until you get
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_win] NINJAM uses OGG Vorbis audio compression to compress
audio, then streams it to a NINJAM server, which can then stream it
to the other people in your jam. This architecture requires a 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 after the 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, macOS, 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.

A server setup guide is here.


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

      sudo apt-get install git-core build-essential
      git clone https://www-dev.cockos.com/ninjam/ninjam.git ./ninjam
      cd ninjam/ninjam/server
      make

NINJAM Source Code

git clone https://www-dev.cockos.com/ninjam/ninjam.git

Official GitHub mirror: github.com/justinfrankel/ninjam

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Also: Very Old, Original, and Obsolete NINJAM Clients

  * Client for OS X (Last updated July 15, 2005)
      + Requires: OS X 10.3 or later, G4 (1GHZ or faster recommended)
      + License: GPL
      + Download OS X client v0.02a ALPHA (600kb DMG)
      + Download OS X client source code v0.02a (150KB TAR.GZ)
  * Client for Windows (Last updated July 20, 2005)
      + Requires: Windows 98+ (2000+ recommended), 2GHZ P4 (or Athlon
        2000+) or faster recommended.
      + License: GPL
      + Download Windows client v0.06 (1MB ZIP)
      + Download Windows client source code v0.06 (212KB ZIP)
  * Client for Linux (Last updated August 30, 2005)
      + Requires: ALSA, ncurses, libogg, libvorbis installed.
      + License: GPL
      + Download Linux client source code v0.01a (80kB TAR.GZ)
  * Wasabi-based client for Windows (Last updated August 1, 2005)
      + License: GPL
      + Download Wasabi-based client for Windows v0.04 ALPHA (644KB
        ZIP)
      + Download Wasabi-based client source code
      + More information on the Wasabi dev toolkit can be found at
        wasabi.t0x.org.

  * Download text-mode client for Windows v0.01a ALPHA (500kb ZIP)
  * Download text-mode client for OS X v0.01a ALPHA (300kb DMG)
  * Download text-mode client source code for OS X and Linux v0.01a
    (80kb TAR.GZ)


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