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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, this is justin Richmond. I hope you're

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Speaker 1: enjoying a nice and safe holiday season. We're looking forward

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Speaker 1: to coming back to you with new episodes of Broken

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Speaker 1: Record in twenty twenty one, starting on January twelve. But

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Speaker 1: in the meantime, we wanted to gift you an interview

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Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell did for another podcast called Solvable. Solvable is

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Speaker 1: hosted by Pushkin CEO Jacob Weisberg and occasionally Malcolm as well.

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Speaker 1: In this episode, Malcolm speaks with a software engineer who

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Speaker 1: solved awkward video conference calls by reducing the delay time

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Speaker 1: that occurs enough that musicians can now jam over Zoom

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Speaker 1: in real time. Enjoy this episode. Here's Malcolm Gladwell. Was Solvable.

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Speaker 1: This is Solvable. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Occasionally we would get

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Speaker 1: to go on break out rooms on Zoom and just

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Speaker 1: discuss our feelings about what's happening at the time, and

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Speaker 1: when the lockdown began, we were all devastated because singing

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Speaker 1: was our life. Sam is twelve years old and like

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Speaker 1: many kids, he's struggling with the restrictions COVID nineteen has

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Speaker 1: imposed on his life. There's a lot of talking to

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Speaker 1: news about the impact of COVID on classroom education. But

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Speaker 1: for Sam and his friends, what they're missing is after school.

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Speaker 1: Ragotsi was like a sanctuary to go to at the

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Speaker 1: end of the school day. Rogatsi is a boy's choir

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Speaker 1: based in California. Sam's been singing in the group for

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Speaker 1: seven years. In pre COVID times, he would rehearse twice

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Speaker 1: a week for several hours each day, but all of

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Speaker 1: that came to a halt when COVID arrived in the US.

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Speaker 1: The choir was basically stuck. If you've ever tried to

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Speaker 1: sing something like Happy Birthday during a zoom meeting, you

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Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. Making music sync up with

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Speaker 1: other people in real time over the Internet is really tough.

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Speaker 1: The connect he delays, what they call latency, can be

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Speaker 1: pretty awkward. Give us the technical explanation of the problem

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Speaker 1: your son was facing. It's rooted in latency. Fundamentally, the

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Speaker 1: time that it takes the sound you make to reach

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Speaker 1: another musician that you're performing with. You need to have

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Speaker 1: a latency of about less than twenty five milliseconds. Otherwise,

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Speaker 1: the asense of the pulse or the beat of the

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Speaker 1: music is just lost across those musicians. Mike Dickie is

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Speaker 1: a software engineer, and after months of seeing his son

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Speaker 1: Sam bummed out about not singing, he realized he could

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Speaker 1: do something about it now for far less than the

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Speaker 1: cost of a year of private music lessons. Dickie created

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Speaker 1: a tool that allows groups of musicians to make music online.

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Speaker 1: And it might be just the beginning. So we could

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Speaker 1: have real time cheering and fan reaction in a basketball game. Yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: Performing in rehearsing with others in real time is really

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Speaker 1: difficult or even impossible for many people. But this problem

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Speaker 1: is solvable. I talked with Mike Dickie about Virtual Studio.

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Speaker 1: It's a low cost device that works with the open

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Speaker 1: source tool called jack Trip to make remote music collaboration

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Speaker 1: possible in real time. Here is our conversation. Mike tell

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Speaker 1: me about the first time this that Rugazzi rehearse using

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Speaker 1: virtual Studio. What was that like? At first? It was

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Speaker 1: a bit terrifying progress out. Let's progress down, okay and

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Speaker 1: keep go. I thought of all the things that could

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Speaker 1: go wrong, and I knew that this was all very

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Speaker 1: new and untested, and I was also worried just of

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Speaker 1: what people would think of me and my son if

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Speaker 1: this was a huge disaster. But when we when we

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Speaker 1: started getting people online and it's started to work, and

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Speaker 1: the boys started to sing right. It was the first

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Speaker 1: time they were singing together in a long time, and

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Speaker 1: I could see through the zoom the faces on the

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Speaker 1: different boys start to light up. I could see the smiles,

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Speaker 1: I could see it in their eyes, and I could

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Speaker 1: see it in the director's eyes, thinking, hey, this actually

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Speaker 1: is working. That experience of seeing people and having them

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Speaker 1: so happy and having their experience with others impact their lives,

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Speaker 1: that's really what led me to put more and more

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Speaker 1: time into this and ultimately to devote all my time

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Speaker 1: towards it. Prior to the lockdown, people must have thought

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Speaker 1: about this problem and tried to solve it. Were there

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Speaker 1: existing technical solutions to the problem of how to sing remotely?

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Speaker 1: There were, thankfully. I looked at several of them when

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Speaker 1: I started out, and I came across this small project

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Speaker 1: from out of Stanford University called jack Trip, which is

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Speaker 1: an open source technology that was developed over a year

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Speaker 1: ago by the Computer Music department. It seemed very promising.

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Speaker 1: It had a high quality, lossless audio. It focused on

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Speaker 1: low latency and over the Internet, and there were a

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Speaker 1: lot of people already using it. The challenge that I

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Speaker 1: found with that is that it was a command line tool.

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Speaker 1: You had to open a terminal on your computer. In

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Speaker 1: many cases, you had to build it from the source code,

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Speaker 1: the C plus plus source code, and then you had

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Speaker 1: to know the command lines and figure out the right

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Speaker 1: command line options in order to use it with other people.

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Speaker 1: That's great for somebody who's very technically oriented, but in

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Speaker 1: my son's chorus, I was trying to figure out how

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Speaker 1: how can we roll this out to a large number

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Speaker 1: of young boys that don't have this advanced technical expertise.

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Speaker 1: And it was actually a challenge that I thought I

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Speaker 1: was well suited for because I understood the technical side

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Speaker 1: and I also had the product background in order to

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Speaker 1: try to make something that was fairly difficult to use

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Speaker 1: fairly easy for most of the people that were out there.

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Speaker 1: So we're used to is it a normal sonic collaboration,

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Speaker 1: a conversation up with people singing, We're already used to

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Speaker 1: a degree of latency. We've incorporated that into our definition

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Speaker 1: of normal. You don't have to you don't have to

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Speaker 1: take latency to zero to make it sound normal. In

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Speaker 1: other words, Yes, it's all about tricking your brain. Sound

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Speaker 1: travels at roughly one foot per millisecond, and so if

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Speaker 1: you're ten feet away from someone, it takes you ten

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Speaker 1: milliseconds to actually hear something that they say or a

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Speaker 1: note that they play on their instrument, and ours have

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Speaker 1: evolved to adapt to that. And when we play music

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Speaker 1: with a group, our brains are used to having people

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Speaker 1: that are a certain distance away. Once they get further

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Speaker 1: than twenty five feet away from you, it becomes really

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Speaker 1: hard for you to stay in sync with them. So

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Speaker 1: the trick here with these software solutions is simply to

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Speaker 1: get under that twenty five threshold with a way that

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Speaker 1: the sound is being transmitted exactly. And there's many steps

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Speaker 1: along that path when you think about it. There's there's

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Speaker 1: the path from let's say you're singing. There's the path

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Speaker 1: from your voice your vocal chords to the microphone. Then

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Speaker 1: there's the path from the microphone to your computer or

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Speaker 1: whatever audio device you're using. There's the process of digitizing

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Speaker 1: that audio, turning it from an analog sound into digital

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Speaker 1: samples that can be buffered and transmitted electronically. And then

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Speaker 1: there's the process of sending all that data from your

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Speaker 1: computer to somebody else's computer and then essentially reversing the

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Speaker 1: process in order to get into the headphones that someone's

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Speaker 1: listening to you on. And each of those steps adds latency,

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Speaker 1: and the key is just minimizing the latency of as

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Speaker 1: many of those steps as possible along the way. Can

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Speaker 1: you give a layperson's explanation of what we mean when

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Speaker 1: we talk about buffer size? Sure? Buffer size is similar

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Speaker 1: to if you're a shipping company and you're trying to

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Speaker 1: send something from China to the United States. You have

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Speaker 1: to load all of these containers onto a ship and

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Speaker 1: then send that ship across the ocean to its destination port.

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Speaker 1: All those containers then get unloaded and delivered to someone else.

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Speaker 1: So each of those containers could be considered a buffer.

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Speaker 1: The ship itself could also be considered a buffer. So

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Speaker 1: you're kind of grouping things into these larger buckets and

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Speaker 1: then transmitting them from one location to another. Describe virtual

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Speaker 1: studio to make what is this thing that you have created?

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Speaker 1: So the device it's basically using a Raspberry pie microcomputer

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Speaker 1: or a single board computer that fits in the palm

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Speaker 1: of your hand, and that this board only costs about

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Speaker 1: thirty five dollars, and so I combine that with a

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Speaker 1: sound card from a company called Hi Fi Berry, which

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Speaker 1: is extremely low latency, and it plugs directly into this

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Speaker 1: single board computer, so you don't have to go through

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Speaker 1: a USB bus, which by itself adds latency by the way,

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Speaker 1: it just talks directly to the CPU and other components

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Speaker 1: on that board, and that allows it to achieve a

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Speaker 1: latency as low as about one millisecond. But when I

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Speaker 1: realized that I could do that, and I tested it

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Speaker 1: and measured it and everything else, then I realized, Hey,

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Speaker 1: this is really possible. We can really do something with this.

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Speaker 1: Wait back up for a moment. So there is this

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Speaker 1: thing Jack Trip, which comes out of Stanford. How do they,

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Speaker 1: without without getting two swallowed up in the technical but

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Speaker 1: explain to a computer dummy like me, how they propose

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Speaker 1: to solve this latency problem. So you have this lag

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Speaker 1: how does Jack Trip solve that problem? There's really no

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Speaker 1: rocket science to it. What Jack Trip does is it

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Speaker 1: just tries to take the audio packets, to extract them

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Speaker 1: from the chip sets that are in your sound card

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Speaker 1: and transmit them over the internet as quickly and as

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Speaker 1: efficiently as possible. A large part of that is just

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Speaker 1: having small buffer sizes, so jack Trip effectively just tries

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Speaker 1: to minimize the overhead of transmitting this data over the networks.

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Speaker 1: How long did it take you to build the first

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Speaker 1: kind of prototype of this? Building the raspberry pie itself

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Speaker 1: was fairly easy. It just took a few days to

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Speaker 1: convert that over. And I had a few people helping

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Speaker 1: test things with me. And I remember the first time

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Speaker 1: I tested it myself, just as a loop back to

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Speaker 1: the server and back to hear myself, and I was

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Speaker 1: certain I did something wrong because it was instantaneous, or

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Speaker 1: at least to me, it sounded instantaneous, and I thought, now,

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Speaker 1: this can't possibly be sending. But yeah, the more I

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Speaker 1: dug into it, the more I convinced myself that this

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Speaker 1: was really happening. Were you Do you remember what? Were

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Speaker 1: you singing or speaking? Do you remember why? I can't

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Speaker 1: say you don't want to hear anything? No, I was

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Speaker 1: just I was whistling a lot. For usually I whistled

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Speaker 1: from my test. Sometimes I do try to sing if

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Speaker 1: I know nobody's listening or in the room. If you

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Speaker 1: do try to sing, what do you try to sing,

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Speaker 1: I sing about my dog. This is like didn't what

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Speaker 1: is it that Alexander Graham Bell said to his assistant

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Speaker 1: on the first telephone transmission. Was it like, you know,

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Speaker 1: doctor Watson, come quick or something like that? This is

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Speaker 1: like up there with that? And when was that when

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Speaker 1: you did that first test and you couldn't believe it?

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Speaker 1: When was that? That was probably in May? Oh wow,

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Speaker 1: this whole thing went really quickly. Yeah. Yeah. We shut

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Speaker 1: things down here in California in mid March, late March.

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Speaker 1: And I started out just you know, some evenings I

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Speaker 1: would look at what's out there and spend a little

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Speaker 1: time here and there. And the amount of time I

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Speaker 1: spent grew more and more every week, until finally I

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Speaker 1: started really putting things together and building things and testing things.

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Speaker 1: By may, So, walk me through how Rigazzi does their rehearsals. Now,

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Speaker 1: how do you put this into practical service? Well, interestingly,

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Speaker 1: Rigassi still starts all of their rehearsals with Zoom, and

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Speaker 1: we still use that as a tool to carry the

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Speaker 1: video and connect everyone visually with one another. And then

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Speaker 1: they in parallel to running Zoom, they run jack Trip

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Speaker 1: and they use jack Trip for the audio and that

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Speaker 1: means that the video is very heavily delayed compared to

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Speaker 1: the audio. It takes a lot longer for you to

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Speaker 1: see something versus when you hear it. And one of

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Speaker 1: the downsides of that is that conducting, we've learned, is

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Speaker 1: just not possible. You can't conduct visually, in particular with

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Speaker 1: the gesticulations that you would normally see a conductor doing

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Speaker 1: throughout a performance. So what the conductors have done and

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Speaker 1: learned over time is that they have started conducting through audio.

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Speaker 1: They give audio cues throughout a performance to either become

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Speaker 1: a little bit louder, a little bit softer, a little

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Speaker 1: bit faster, and when to cut off. All these things

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Speaker 1: ended up moving from the visual side to the audio.

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Speaker 1: So we still we still use the video just to

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Speaker 1: help everybody seeing one another, helps give them a little

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Speaker 1: bit more sense of presence. So everyone does. Every boy

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Speaker 1: in the choir have to have his own little virtual studio. Yes,

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Speaker 1: early on a major donor that allowed us to distribute

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Speaker 1: this out to the entire chorus. It's about one hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty dollars for the device, and that doesn't include

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Speaker 1: the accessories, which would be the microphone and some cables.

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Speaker 1: So altogether it's about two hundred dollars. Did you when

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Speaker 1: you set out to solve this particular rob you quit

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Speaker 1: your old job to focus on this? Was that was? That?

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Speaker 1: Was that a big step? Did that seem like a

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Speaker 1: rash step? It still seems like a rash step. It was.

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Speaker 1: It was certainly a monumental and life changing step for me.

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Speaker 1: Um I also realized that this isn't something that's unique

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Speaker 1: to Ragatzi. This is a problem that's really general across

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Speaker 1: the entire world. And to me that was that was

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Speaker 1: one of those moments where I realized that I could

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Speaker 1: do something to help, and I may not ever have

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Speaker 1: an opportunity to have an impact like I could at

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Speaker 1: that moment. How do people I mean, so you have

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Speaker 1: this thing that's now being used by Rigazzi, how do

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Speaker 1: you get the Rigazzi cam't be the only choir out there?

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Speaker 1: Or people who might I mean, have I come from

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Speaker 1: a family where three members of my family are in

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Speaker 1: church choirs and they've been grounded since March. I don't

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Speaker 1: think they think it's even possible to be able to

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Speaker 1: sing together. How have you gotten the word out about

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Speaker 1: virtual studio? Different mechanisms I'm certainly in the Within the

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Speaker 1: Bay area itself, we had a number of connections to

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Speaker 1: other choruses and performing arts organizations. We've also been working

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Speaker 1: a lot with Chorus America, which is a great organization

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Speaker 1: of many choruses across the country. So we're slowly getting

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Speaker 1: the information and the word out that this is possible

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Speaker 1: through through not just our mechanism, but different mechanisms. So

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Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see as this progresses over the

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Speaker 1: next several months. But wait, I would go even further.

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Speaker 1: There's a whole category of live experiences which could be

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Speaker 1: recreated using this. So I'm thinking, I mean, I don't

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Speaker 1: know whether you're a basketball fan, but imagine an NBA

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Speaker 1: game where everyone who's watching, every fan who's watching the game,

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Speaker 1: has one of these devices in their house, So we

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Speaker 1: could have real time cheering and fan reaction in a

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Speaker 1: basketball game. We can recreate a reel. Right now, they're

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Speaker 1: just doing fake crowd noise. Right it's a total phony experience.

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Speaker 1: But if I have if I elimit, eliminate the latency

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Speaker 1: for fans to react to a sporting event, I've I've

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Speaker 1: got a virtual I've got a realistic virtual fan experience.

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Speaker 1: Do I not. Yeah, absolutely, Honestly, I haven't even thought

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Speaker 1: about sports. But I think you're totally correct, Mike, Mike,

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Speaker 1: this is this is you can this is the future

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Speaker 1: of this, This is That's the first thing I thought

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Speaker 1: about when when I was thinking of because this is

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Speaker 1: this huge because every single I don't know why I'm

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Speaker 1: going on like this, but every single sporting event right

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Speaker 1: now and that goes on television is suffering huge ratings declines.

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Speaker 1: And that is because the experience of watching sports doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem real. And if you're telling me, if it's this easy,

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Speaker 1: I just have to I gotta buy it. I gotta

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Speaker 1: buy a device if I want to play. But people

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Speaker 1: are they were they were paying one hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: bucks for their ticket to the to one game before.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like people aren't used to investing

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Speaker 1: in a fan experience. Yeah, it's a it's a great point.

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Speaker 1: I think what one challenge we have is just with

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Speaker 1: the video side of it is we can make the

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Speaker 1: audio very quick, but you're still going to see things

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Speaker 1: delayed on the video side. Potentially, if the delay of

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Speaker 1: the video is the same for everyone who's watching, that

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Speaker 1: may not be an issue, like they'll still hear each

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Speaker 1: other in sync with what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. What's fascinating

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Speaker 1: to me is how you start with a very very

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Speaker 1: specific and very very personal problem, which is your son

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Speaker 1: is bombed out that he can't sing with his chorus,

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Speaker 1: And now you know, we're six months later and you're

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Speaker 1: thinking about recreating the way in which we experience live music,

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Speaker 1: and I'm going on and on about rescuing the NBA,

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Speaker 1: And is it I mean, it's this sort of funny

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Speaker 1: and fascinating picture of how innovation works. It is. It's

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Speaker 1: It's amazing, isn't it. Yeah, that whole process of innovation

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Speaker 1: being this this thing that builds and builds and changes

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Speaker 1: over time and ways you don't even expect it to. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: That's That's what I've always loved about technology. It's always

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Speaker 1: drawn me into the world of entrepreneurism and creating products.

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Speaker 1: And now I have the opportunity to do that in

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Speaker 1: a way that involves something I really love, which is music,

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Speaker 1: but also is helping people. Where could you go to

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Speaker 1: listen in on something that's been performance has been conducted

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Speaker 1: or recorded over virtual studio. The Rigassi Voye Chorus has

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Speaker 1: recorded and published a number of our rehearsals online on YouTube,

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Speaker 1: so the best place to see a few examples is

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Speaker 1: probably at Rigazzi's YouTube channel. One last thing, can you

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Speaker 1: give us a little sense of what listeners can do

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Speaker 1: if they want to make use of this new idea

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Speaker 1: or virtual studio or they want to spread the word.

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Speaker 1: Do you have any practical some practical words of advice

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Speaker 1: to our listeners. Yes, I'd suggest going to our website

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Speaker 1: at jacktrip dot org, where we have a lot of

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Speaker 1: different resources and people bowl who are volunteers available to

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Speaker 1: help answer questions. Mike Dickie is co founder and chairman

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Speaker 1: of the Jack Tripp Foundation and the creator of Virtual Studio.

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Speaker 1: And we're hearing the Ragatzi Boys Choir from California rehearsing

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Speaker 1: from over thirty locations at once using jack Trip and

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Speaker 1: Virtual Studio. Be sure to check out our show notes

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Speaker 1: to learn more about online music collaboration and ways you

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Speaker 1: can get involved. Next week, Unsolvable, just ahead of Thanksgiving,

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Speaker 1: retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. We'll talk about how social

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Speaker 1: isolation is solvable even when feels like you're trapped alone

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Speaker 1: so many miles and miles away from those who love most.

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Speaker 1: I hope you'll join us. Solvable is brought to you

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Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Our show is produced by Camille Baptista,

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Speaker 1: Senior producer jos and Frank. Catherine Gerardo is our managing

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Speaker 1: producer and our Executive producer is Miilabell. Special thanks to

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Speaker 1: Kobe Gilford, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Carle Migliori and Kadisha Holland.

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Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Bobber