Music and tech cutting down the milliseconds

STOCKHOLM/LONDON — Musicians desperate to work together in harmony while kept apart by COVID-19 lockdowns have been collaborating with tech companies to shave milliseconds from delays on their online connections, driving innovations that will transcend music.

To recreate the experience of performing together live when artists and audiences are apart, a collective effort has been under way to reduce the lag between a sound being produced and being heard, known as latency.

In rehearsals for Rossini’s “Barber of Seville,” the San Francisco Opera has used a test version of a device called Aloha, developed by Stockholm-based Elk O.S., in partnership with Ericsson, Vodafone and Verizon.

The pocket-sized device cuts the lag from around 600 milliseconds, which would make two performers sound out of sync, to roughly 20 milliseconds, which is no greater than if the performers were in the same room.

“That was shocking to me that technology has advanced that far,” said soprano AnneMarie MacIntosh, who is performing in the production scheduled to open to sociallydistanced, drive-in audiences on today.

Terrified of throat infections, singers tend to be germaphobic at the best of times, which makes digital technology like the Aloha attractive with or without a pandemic. “You can be in a separate space and still have a rehearsal and still do it safely and not worry about potentially getting someone else sick,” said MacIntosh.

While innovations such as the Aloha can work with the existing Internet infrastructure, the rollout of 5G, which promises speeds 10 to 20 times faster than 4G wireless networks, could spur even more dramatic advances.

The likes of Verizon and Ericsson intend to take advantage of 5G to overcome latency issues for a wide range of industries.