DM-Recorder Uniting Musicians

Noneric - AKA Hans - of Digitalmusician.net and his team have been working hard on their online collaboration software - The Digital Musician Recorder (DM-Recorder) - over the last few months and, I have to say, just looks awesome.

With this little marvel, you can jam and/or record in real-time with other musicians across the world, via the internet.

Hang on, I hear the half-clueful among you whispering: real-time? Across the internet?

Yes, apparently so. The real-time claim is premised upon their timestamping technology - which I did know more about but if you were to ask me right now, I'd have to say, ask me later 'cos it's Sunday and I was caned last night.

So what else can DM-Recorder do?

Well, you can chat with your online collaborator via video and/or talkback and; you can buy and sell your own music or services - so if you're an accomplished bassist (ahem), you can advertise your bass-playing skills to other muso's - like a session-player!.

The application itself gives you 16 tracks and can also be used as a ReWire device (either as master or slave) plugging you into the sequencer goodness of Cubase, Reason, Pro Tools, SONAR and the rest of them.

DM-Recorder is standalone software and free. But where's the catch, I hear you whisper, again (or am I just paranoid?).

There are three service-levels you can choose from:

1. Free Account: Limited audio transfer rate of 128 kbit/s. 50 MB storage space on the server each month. 100 MB can be uploaded and 300 MB downloaded.
2. Pro Account: (€9.90/month) you can increase your range of options. Work with lossless compressed audio data, comparable - sound-wise - to uncompressed audio. 150 MB storage space on the server each month, 100 MB can be uploaded and 300 MB downloaded. Send-File utility for transferring data directly to your partner.
3. Studio Account: (€35/month) Studio Account owners can allocate up to seven further sub-accounts for partners that are not community members. 250 MB server space each month plus up to 450 MB upload and 800 MB download.

DM-Recorder Performance

Like I said earlier, I think this is awesome... if it can deliver!

I've not used it so wouldn't dare to comment on that, though I do wonder how useful the supplied storage space would be, given the large size of music-files - even on their Studio Account tariff, it still seems low, IMO. Maybe I'm missing something, though.

Also, the upload and download size limits... what's that mean? Bandwidth?

Again, I'm probably missing sommat but DM-Recorder is (apparently) a peer-to-peer application (meaning you are directly connected to your partners' PC) so I'm not sure how this should be limited at all. Or maybe it's the bandwidth limit for up/downloading files to your storage space - that would still seem debilitatingly low, IMO.

Maybe someone can clear those question marks up. In the meantime, I suggest you blast on over there to see for yourself.

DM-Recorder is in beta version at the moment but freely downloadable to play with on both Mac and Win XP.