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!

  • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Jitsi works, and they have open relays to test with, but as the thing here is very much analog and I’d assume she’d just need to see your position, how hands move etc, the audio quality isn’t the most important thing here. Sure, it helps, but personally I’d just use zoom/teams/hangouts/something readily available and invest in a decent microphone (and audio in general) + camera.

    That way you don’t need to provide helpdesk on how to use your thing and waste time from actual lessons nor need to debug server issues while you’ve been scheduled to train with your teacher.

    • smiletolerantly@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Yeah, those are all fair points. We’ve been using Jitsi for work with pretty much no problems, albeit in group calls where video and audio quality don’t matter too much. Someone below gave some good recommendations for hardware as well.

      The helpdesk issue… IDK. If Jitsi works, it is incredibly easy to use, right? Basically just, click this link and you’re in. (If does some heavy lifting there, I know :D)