Pristine Quality Networked Music Performance System for the Web

The urge for high-speed Internet connectivity, that we have witnessed since the origins of the web, has now have paved the way for pristine quality audio communications, i.e., without artifacts arising from audio compression, and, whenever possible, with low acquisition and processing latency.In this work, we present a software application (part of the HiFiReM project) that provides a unified environment, both native/embedded and web-based, for high-fidelity interactive multi-user musical performances across the Internet. The system is shown to outperform popular video-conferencing applications that adopt state-of-the-art audio compression techniques in terms of perceived audio quality.Subjective quality assessments confirm that, given adequate network conditions, users involved in remote audio communications experience performative conditions close to those of in-presence musical interactions, even if at several miles of distance.