We're getting deep into the weeds here, but I'd like to point out that even for a live symphonic performance it's technically possible, using today's technologies and limits of physics, to split the orchestra in half and still deliver an excellent live performance.
To illustrate how this works, let's suppose the two halves are Orchestra A and Orchestra B. A is in Vienna, and B is in Tokyo, let's suppose. The audience is sitting anywhere -- it can be a live concert broadcast, for example. And let's suppose the conductor is also in Vienna with Orchestra A, with high fidelity audio and video links, unidirectional from Vienna to Tokyo. The conductor and Orchestra A start playing. Orchestra B starts playing a fraction of a second later (assuming the piece calls for a simultaneous start), guided by the same conductor and Orchestra A's musical and other queues. The broadcast is transmitted, live, out of Tokyo from the two feeds and carefully synchronized: one feed remote from Vienna, and one local from Tokyo. As long as the transmission delay from Vienna to Tokyo holds steady, everything works in this example.... ....And as long as Orchestra A includes enough of the musicians so that they don't need to rely on any musical or other cues from Orchestra B. Orchestra B can, of course, rely on any/all cues from Orchestra A. In this scenario they would be wearing earpieces or headphones, and they'd have a video screen to watch the conductor and their fellow musicians in Orchestra A. Maybe the members of Orchestra B would be wearing virtual reality goggles. Anyway, the point is that even with live performances, even with speed of light transmission delays, a split orchestra can still create first class live music together. As long as that digital transmission doesn't "wobble" any more than the atmosphere within a single concert hall between the musicians' ears would, and with the other caveats, it all works. This basic approach has been used for live broadcast performances, usually with vocalists in the Orchestra B part. In some cases more than two parts are possible: A and B1, B2, B3, etc. When there are more than two parts the broadcast equipment needs to add location-specific delays to each of the feeds before transmission in order to synchronize them properly. But it's possible. There are some computing analogs to these split orchestral scenarios. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
