Music and tech synergy to slice the milliseconds
Musicians desperate to interact in harmony while kept apart by COVID-19 lockdowns have already been collaborating with tech companies to shave milliseconds from delays on the online connections, driving innovations which will transcend music.
To recreate the knowledge of performing together live when artists and audiences are apart, a collective effort has been under way to reduce the lag between a sound being produced and being heard, referred to as latency.
In rehearsals for Rossini's Barber of Seville, the SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA Opera has used a test version of a device called Aloha, produced by Stockholm-based Elk O.S., in partnership with Ericsson, Vodafone and Verizon.
The pocket-sized device cuts the lag from around 600 milliseconds, which would make two performers sound out of sync, to roughly 20 milliseconds, which is no higher than if the performers were in the same room.
"That was shocking if you ask me that technology has advanced that far," said soprano Anne-Marie MacIntosh, who's performing in the production scheduled to available to socially-distanced, drive-in audiences on Friday.
Terrified of throat infections, singers have a tendency to be germaphobic at the very best of times, which makes digital technology just like the Aloha attractive with or with out a pandemic.
"You can be in another space but still have a rehearsal but still do it safely rather than worry about potentially getting someone else sick," said MacIntosh.
While innovations such as the Aloha could work with the existing internet infrastructure, the rollout of 5G, which promises speeds 10 to 20 times faster than 4G wireless networks, could spur even more dramatic advances.
Famous brands Verizon and Ericsson plan to take good thing about 5G to overcome latency issues for a variety of industries. Digital surgery, self-driving cars, gaming and virtual reality are some of the areas more likely to benefit.
"We are simply scratching the top of how transformative this technology will be," said Nikki Palmer, chief product development officer at Verizon.
Matthew Shilvock, general director of the SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA Opera, said technology had enabled the upcoming Rossini production to be more experimental and transform the backstage environment into portion of the set.
As singers no longer need to be on stage to sing together and audiences can be anywhere, addititionally there is the prospect of spectators, however remote, to be engaged in the live moment that makes performances exciting.
"I think there's a new hunger, there's a fresh curiosity which has developed around digital content," Shilvock said.
Elk was founded by Michele Benincaso, a violin-maker who trained at a specialist school in Cremona, Italy. He started employed in his Stockholm basement around six years back with the imagine making musicians as digitally connected as other professionals.
"What the pandemic has told us and continues to be telling us, it's time for music and musicians to go into the digital world," he said. "The ultimate goal is engaging the fan base in a totally new way."
REMOTE SURGERY
While many musicians are eager to return to performances in packed concert halls, Benincaso said that the benefits associated with reducing latency to levels seen when performers are in the same room would be felt long following the end of COVID-19 lockdowns.
For example, it could cut carbon emissions along with budgets through the elimination of journeys, reduce the dependence on drummers to lug unwieldy kit to recording sessions, and allow audiences to play with professional musicians in ground breaking ways.
Benincaso said he was also working with major bands from outside the field of classical music, but could not name them as a result of confidentiality agreements.
He said the San Francisco Opera experiments had put Aloha on track for a commercial release in October.
Beyond music, an early on 5G-driven change may very well be in the sphere of leisure and entertainment, as carnivals and shopping malls might use low-latency networks to provide an augmented reality experience for visitors.
Further into the future, developers are looking to reach a sufficiently minute and stable latency to permit a surgeon to execute an operation at good distance from a patient, using robotic arms.
For the reason that scenario, even the briefest spike right into a higher latency, or greater lag, is actually a matter of life and death.
"There cannot be a sudden change when you are performing a critical maneuver," said Jan Söderström, head of Technology Office Silicon Valley at Ericsson.
There is also the question of steps to make all this pay, which probably means slicing up the network, in order that the surgeons or musicians for whom timing is of the essence, might pay more for a guarantee of stable low latency.
"That isn't current but that is the course, the model that people foresee," Söderström said.
Source: japantoday.com
