Ask HN: Video conferencing solution for 1x1 guitar lessons?

2 points by mvanga 5 years ago | 3 comments

Thanks to working from home during the pandemic I recovered some extra time from my daily commute, and I've been taking guitar lessons online.

So far I've tried Skype and Zoom but the latency and audio quality are really quite terrible.

Skype's audio quality isn't particularly great and the video quality seems to adjust automatically during the call. With Zoom (web client) it does all kinds of weird zooming (!) of the camera (web client) and the audio quality was horrific (web and desktop client). For now we've reverted back to Skype.

Is there any solution anyone can recommend that focuses on *minimizing latency and maximizing audio quality above all the other features* (e.g., I don't need any team features; the ability to record a session would be nice but not required)? I'm even willing to look at self-hosted solutions at this point.

Thanks!

toast0 5 years ago |

Unless you and the teacher both have rock solid, low latency internet connections, you'll probably have a better time if you split video from audio.

The best is if you can both use real landlines for audio. Audio bandwidth is terrible (8kHz), but latency and jitter should be very low. As I understand it, if you can get ISDN audio calling, that's even better, but like good luck convincing your teacher and your phone company (and their phone company) to get that installed.

If you don't have real landlines available, try voip landlines (using G.711u or G.722.2 if that's supported) or cell phones.

Whatever you do, definitely don't use anything wifi or bluetooth at all.

taral3 5 years ago |

You can try https://3veta.com/

ggy1021 5 years ago |

https://jitsi.org/

try this