Basically, the title. After years of inactivty, I’ll be taking music (cello) lessons again, with my teacher of yesteryear, from whom I’ve moved half a country away.

She has suggested Zoom but is open to alternatives. I don’t particularly like Zoom, plus I have a feeling better quality can be had through a custom solution - but I’m at a bit of a loss as to what exactly would be a good fit for this project.

Maybe Jitsi? Does someone here have experience with it and could tell me if it’s possible to set something like a “target” audio quality?

For hardware, I basically have two options. Both are already in use, for different things, and have sufficient processing capabilities - albeit no GPU:

  • host everything at home. Plus: lowest possible latency from me to the server. Not sure how much that is worth though.
  • root server in the Hetzner cloud: much faster network speed. Again though, not sure how beneficial that is, the ultimate bottleneck will always be my upload speed (40Mbit)

OK, I realize that this post is a but of a random assortment of thoughts. I’d be really happy about suggestions and / or hearing about other’s experiences with similar use-cases!

  • @[email protected]English
    3•3 months ago

    Tangent, unsolicited:

    Music lessons over video call, that has to be a real pain. I can’t find it now, but there’s an Adam Neely video where he talks about why online recording sessions can’t work, as transmission latency works against the immediacy needed to play music together. He said it better than I can.

    Except if your idea is to play in turns, but then capturing the thing you want to show… Can’t you find another teacher closer to you?

    • @[email protected]English
      5•3 months ago

      I took lessons over zoom for years, and it works fine. Is not a recording session, you don’t need to play together.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      2•3 months ago

      Yeah, I am havong mixed feelings about this. But at least during Covid, it was apparently the norm, so it must work, somehow…

      I could find a teacher closer to me, but for one thing, I only have a boke available, and biking ~10km with the cello on my back is not something I look forward to doing on a regular basis. The other thing is that I consider this teacher a friend, she’s given me lessonsfor more than a decade in the past, and I know we vibe well together.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•3 months ago

        No harm in giving it a try, but I personally wouldn’t bother with a selfhosted solution for it. Especially if you’re not sure it will work out.