What I need in the first place is to have a few (dozens) jam sessions with you guys...
I find this very confusing as a musician.
You are hearing a measure before, and playing along what will be heard in next measure.
Well it is somehow neat because in 4/4 measure 1st and 3rd beat are more similar than 1st and 2nd...
I don't know what will make a master recording, so I don't have an idea what to mix to the other users. The fact is I think I know, but still I lack some real-life experience here. Unfortunately, my dialup here is simply too slow to try that right now. I'll pack my gear and go in some internet caffe.
I understand that server-side mixing would include some latency (mixing and probably decompressing/compressing), but servers are fast machines by default, aren't they? On the other side, right now bandwidth needed for 5+ member(instrument) band is (especially in my case) enormous and greatly reduces potential participants. In my opinion mixing should be done for sure, so every client recieves only one stream.
Users that have more than one local channel should mix it locally. Maybe some kind of distributed mixing is possible, but it needs some serious thinking.
@tanstaafl:
Yes, Qt is more suitable than GTK because it is multi-platform: supports (more or less equaly) X11, Windows and OS X, so there is no need for branches for each OS.
@yanhl:
I do not understand why do you think that chaning mix would make such a problem? Client with mixing privileges sends new mixing preset and server in the next mixing cycle applies the settings. Of course, that means that mixing must be synchonized, but that is a must anyhow. And I did not think of a producer seriously, it shouldn't be a man who constantly changes volumes and effects, just some guy you can tell: "Turn me down a bit".
Well see you in a few days,
Nikola