Eureka Moment

Cubase
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1

I have just realised something staggering that will change music tech completely. You may think I am going to talk about MIDI 2, which is of course going to change everything, once we get hardware compatible devices. Buyt on, its not that, its 5G. 5G has the potential to change everything.

Most of us are aware of latency. Old Sound cards used to have a latency issue and some old instruments too. Basically latency is the gap between the signal request (e.g.) pressing a piano key, and the delivery of the signal in this case the broadcasting of a sound. Musically speaking a digital keyboard/sound system needs a latency of below 5 millisecs to be useable. Anything more than this then the player can hear an audibler lag between when he/she presses the key and when the sound is generated.Mosat of you know this I am sure.

But did you know that 4G has a latency of 50-100msecs? Never thought about it? How about 5G? Well obviously using 4g it will be no good storing your sounds on the cloud for live performance, they could not download fast enough. But (given optimum conditions which are rollong out now) 5g promises latency of less than 1 msec.
My point is this. If it took 1 msec to deliver a sound stored on the cloud, then it is perfectly possible for a keyboard to connect to a sound site and immediately access a sound set, no need for download or install. Just pipe it straight from the cloud, through to the speakers at the touch of a key. This could go either way, from your sound system to the cloud, or vica versa. Live transmission of a MIDI performance.
Personally I can see this being very powerful, especially when combined with MIDI 2.

2

Never ever believe the hype when they roll out new tech, lab conditions do not apply to real world! 4G was supposed to replace broadband at home, it never did! Neither will 5G unless you live in a remote location where cabled connection is too expensive or not feasible!

Wireless will not beat cabled connection for many reasons, the main one is, the wireless signal cannot be controlled like a cable, it’s prone to interference and the weather.

It’ll be impossible for you to get a sound from the “cloud” at 1ms level with the available tech. The 1ms latency applies to the first node on the network, you then add the additional (many) milliseconds to go fetch the sounds from whatever provider it may be, then back to your machine. Round trip all of sudden is up to 20 or 3/4/50ms, or more!

3

I did say optimally. Lots of 5G base stations need to be rolled out, but the tech will improve over a few years. I can see this as being feasible in some settings in a few years, perhaps not in rural locations.