We built the hackathon idea we gave up on in 2011
In 2011 I received an invite to attend HackManchester in England - I'm actually terrible with hackathon ideas and at the time I was excited about the WebAudio API which had just been announced by Google/Chrome.
My bright idea was to buy a MIDI-keyboard, use the laptop mic and have a shared room where remote musicians can jam together - we had 48 hours to build it and after 24 hours I think we all realised that we were taking on a technical problem that was far too big for a hackathon. It died, but I kept the domain name.
Over time I've had to renew that domain name and there's always been a thought in the back of my mind - is now the right time? Can I actually do it?
And it turns out that we can.
Today we (a small team in the UK) are launching our waitlist for a new audio-collaboration platform called HiFiFu - at hififu.com.
HiFiFu is a place for musicians to work together in real-time on tracks, stems and live audio.
The killer for most realtime audio-collaboration so far has been platform-access - some are Mac-only - some require an app to be installed etc.
This is web only, nothing to download and install - just head to hififu and start jamming.
If you're technical (or an audiophile) then we do recommend being on a Mac and being wired (RJ45 cable) into your ethernet/router whatever - this is to lower latency between musicians - more technical detail is available at the waitlist site.
We have a number of use-cases we're targeting: * find-and-jam: musicians can find and add other musicians to their room/session. * Portable DJ: import your DAWProject, work on tracks and stems with real VST processing - keep your room or download the DAWProject when you're done. * Play-along (or karaoke): using SAM3Audio we can scrub one or more aspects of a music track and you and others can play or sing along with the remaining track elements. * mixed context: sound-engineers, song-writers, guitarists, vocalists etc. all remote around the world, but working in the same session/room. * MIDI support: tracks, stems and realtime audio can come from waveform (mic, audio upload etc.), MIDI (upload or device-input) with effects applied. * multiple DJs, sound-engineers: complex arrangements can be set up with participants adding multiple tracks, stems etc. so they can work-together back-to-back. * broadcast: your session/room can be surfaced to millions of listeners for free, sponsored or ticketed broadcasting. * forking/tapping a room: if the room allows it, you can fork/tap a session and add your own take on it (in a new room/session). Maybe there's a harpist you like, and you want to add your own vocals? Maybe someone takes that combination and layers over a realtime mix?
We think there's a lot of potential to this platform, and we're excited about it and we want to stabilise it and bring more features before we open the doors - but we need to know if there's demand for it. Because at the moment we've built something that we think is cool, but we're not actually sure.
Please join the waitlist at https://hififu.com and we'll keep you updated on the progress. And, of course, I'm happy to answer any questions here.
Thank you for reading