Hearing Yourself on JackTrip: Studio Echo versus Monitoring

When making music, it's essential to hear your own sound, a process known as "monitoring." This article covers the differences between Direct/Digital Monitoring and Studio Echo Volume in JackTrip to help you get setup.

Hearing yourself

When making music, it's more or less essential to hear your own sounds, so that you can adjust what you're playing to match others. We call hearing yourself "monitoring" your signal.

When we play acoustic music, we naturally hear ourselves through the air. You strum the guitar, and the sounds travel to your ears through the air and bounce off the walls back to you (reverb).

When we play on JackTrip, we can't necessarily hear ourselves well because we're wearing headphones. But we would still like to be able to hear ourselves in our headphones! There are three options for doing this:

1. Direct monitoring (available on many audio devices)
2. Digital monitoring (available for some USB interfaces with JackTrip Digital Bridges)
3. Studio Echo Volume (AKA server side monitoring)
   • (See: Using JackTrip Soundscapes to Control your Audio and add FX)

This guide will cover the pros and cons of each:

Option 1: Direct Monitoring

Direct Monitoring is listening to your signal through your audio interface with no delay. Many audio interfaces support direct monitoring through a button or knob on the interface. When active, your inputs are routed to your headphones so you can hear what's going in.

We can't cover them all the ways that interfaces allow you to do this, but here's an example from Focusrite, a very popular interface manufacturer: https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360000706625-How-to-use-the-Direct-Monitor-feature-on-the-Scarlett-Solo-2i2-and-iTrack-Solo

Pros:

• can be controlled individually for each participant
• natural to hear yourself without delay
• easy to play to
• easy to hear yourself loudly

Cons:

• does not make it easier to match rhythms with others
• may hear yourself too loudly compared with others (if your interface does not allow you to adjust it)

Option 2: Digital Monitoring

Digital Monitoring is similar to Direct Monitoring, except that it has a small amount of delay introduced. The signal passes through your audio interface's circuitry and your computer's hardware drivers, so the delay you hear is going to be the same delay that your audio interface generates for everything it does.

All decent audio interfaces nowadays have a low enough internal delay that you should not be able to notice it (about 5ms or less, with some like UA's Apollo boasting only about 1ms). If the delay introduced by your audio interface is high enough that it bothers you, you should consider buying a new one. You are unlikely to be successful playing live with other people if your audio interface is too slow.

JackTrip's Desktop App includes a built-in Monitor volume feature for all audio interfaces. You can also use JackTrip's Digital Bridge with USB devices that support it.

Pros:

• can be controlled individually for each participant
• natural to hear yourself with almost zero delay
• easy to play to
• easy to adjust how loudly you hear yourself

Cons:

• does not make it easier to match rhythms with others
• older, slower audio interfaces may introduce bad delay

Option 3: Studio Echo Volume

Studio Echo Volume (formerly known as "Self Volume" and "Loopback Volume") allows you to control how much of your signal is sent back to you from the studio. The audio travels to the studio and back over the Internet before it is played in your headphones, along with the rest of the audio from the other musicians.

Pros:

• may make it easier to stay in rhythmic sync
• you can hear the full mix with yourself in it

Cons:

• applies to all participants in the studio; no way to control this individually
• if latency is high, studio echo volume is hard to play with
• less natural compared with real life
• using studio echo volume with direct monitoring creates a chorus effect

"Studio Echo" volume at 0%, the default