Network synchronization and collaboration with AudioChain
AudioChain enables you to work on audio projects with other people via the local computer network (LAN) or the internet. All audio project data, the recorded audio files and the drum schema data is then synchronized automatically and in a very convenient way. You simply run the built in synchronization network service and other people can connect to it for opening and modifying the project in realtime. This way you can collaborate and be creative with your musician friends that are far away.
To run the built in synchronization service, select the "Settings" menu and choose the menu item "Remote Synchronization Settings". In the upcoming dialog enable the service and choose any free port on your computer (a port is a number between 1024 and 65535). You may want to let the synchronization service startup, when the program is started. In this case enable the entry "Enable Sync Service On Startup". Also you can enable the optional logging to system console if you like to see what is transferred. That is all to be done for the synchronization service.
To connect with this service from remote, select the "Settings" menu and choose the menu item "Create Sync Connection ...". In the upcoming dialog enter the IP address or the hostname of the computer that is running the synchronization service you like to connect with and the corresponding port that was chosen by the synchronization service initiator.
Example: Peter starts the service at any port on his computer. Then Peter tells John the IP address of the computer and the chosen port. John connects to this service by creating the sync connection by entering that IP and port.
Once the connection is established, the already opened projects will be synchronized immediately. The projects get only synced, if they are equal in the sense of their internal identifiers.
To open a remote project or to close the connection, select the "Settings" menu and choose "Sync Connections". For every remote connection there will be a sub menu entry labeled with the hostname or IP address and the remote port. Each sub menu entry stands for a remote connection. Via these sub menu entries you can open remote projects or close the connection.
Assumed you want to open a remote project, select the corresponding connection and choose "Open Remote Project ...". A dialog will come up that display a list of available remote projects (the name and the internal project identifier). Select one of these projects and enter a directory for the local destination. Then click the "Open Remote Audio Project" button.
The synchronization process depends on the network bandwidth. The audio files usually have many megabytes, so a sync via a thin internet connection may take some time. So you might want to test the whole procedure with a new small test project and some short recordings.
Security notices
The synchronization service comes with no authentication, authorization or encryption mechanisms, because security is not the main business of this program. If you like to have a secure connection via the internet, you might want to use SSH tunneling. There is also no default port defined, the initial service port is randomly generated and the synchronization service is not enabled by default. The realtime synchronization commands are transferred in plain text via the network. Every sync connection opens two network sockets, one for the realtime synchronization and one for tranferring large binary data. The network connection establishes between the both participants only, so you must not be afraid that there will be any data transferred to any other mystic servers in the internet. Have fun!