When Musicians Lock In: Coupled Oscillators and the Physics of Ensemble Synchronisation

The Kuramoto model explains how heterogeneous phase oscillators can develop collective synchrony. It is a useful analogy for ensemble timing, applause, and delayed feedback, but it does not by itself predict a universal networked- music latency limit or prove neural coupling between musicians.

8 February 2024 · 7 min · Sebastian Spicker

How Low Can You Go? Measuring Latency for Networked Music Performance Across Europe

We measured end-to-end audio and video latency for LoLa and MVTP across six European research-network links. One-way audio latency ranged from 7.5 to 22.5 ms in these deployments. Route topology and endpoint processing made air distance alone a poor predictor; one firewall comparison found higher loss and buffer instability.

26 August 2023 · 8 min · Sebastian Spicker