The equipment allows for video and audio collaborations online between musicians by managing and reducing audio latency.
Aloha joins a growing number of products that allow musicians and amateurs to collaborate online.
Its a niche market thats growing as musicians are forced to stay home because of the pandemic.
Zazil Media Group (Janice Fahey Dolan)
But it opens up a new kind of collaboration if two people simply cant travel to be together.
Lag Matters
Aloha claims to reduce the audio lag between computers over the internet.
The lag isnt very noticeable during conversations, like over Zoom, but it makes music collaboration difficult.
Zazil Media Group (Janice Fahey Dolan)
The pandemic has profoundly impacted the music industry, throwing the live creative collaboration aspect of it into crisis.
According toOxford Universitys Faculty of Music, the perceptual threshold to hear a delay is around 25 milliseconds.
Its extremely difficult to work together if the timing is off even a little bit.
A companion app provides video chat, audio controls, and the option to live stream.
Aloha is expected to be released commercially next year and as a software beta within the next few weeks.
No price has been set.
Elk is working to provide schools with Aloha devices, too.
If you cannot play with teachers it doesnt really work, he said.
A lot of people talk about using Zoom, but thats not really interacting with teachers.
Its more like watching a Youtube video.
But Aloha turned out to be different, he said, because of its speed and ease of use.
Despite the advances promised by Aloha, musicians say it was unlikely to completely replace live sessions.
The disadvantages are obvious, Raoofi said in a phone interview.
Producing music together remotely does offer one unexpected advantage, Little said.
[At least] theres no embarrassment or sense of people judging you.
