MELD writing
How this actually works
Recording, playing together and mastering in a browser — what works, what does not, and why. Written by the people building MELD, with a source for every number and no number we cannot point at.
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MELD Jam vs NINJAM: which way of jamming online is right for you?
They are two different answers to the same problem, and the difference is one sentence. NINJAM does not try to play in real time at all: everyone hears everyone else one whole interval late — a bar or more — exactly on the beat, so distance stops mattering. MELD Jam plays in real time first, measures the round trip, tells you when the distance is too great, and only then offers the same one-bar-late trick, in a browser tab, with nothing to install. If your bandmate is in the next city, real time works and MELD is the shorter road. If they are across an ocean, neither product can beat physics, and the interval model — NINJAM's since 2005, MELD's delay jam now — is the only one that keeps time.
· 9 min read -
What loudness should you master to?
Master to about −14 LUFS integrated with true peaks no higher than −1 dBTP, and you are done. That is what Spotify publishes and normalises to, in both directions. Here is the part almost every other article leaves out: Spotify and Apple Podcasts are the only two services that publish a loudness number at all. The tidy table of targets for Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon and Tidal that you have read a hundred times is third-party measurement, not a specification any of those companies issued.
· 8 min read -
How to record multiple tracks in a browser
Yes, it genuinely works now: open a tab, record a part, record a second part over it while the first plays, and keep going. The browser stopped being the limitation years ago — AudioWorklet, the low-level audio processing a real recorder needs, has been available in every major browser since April 2021. What decides whether your recording sounds good is not the browser. It is three things: closed-back headphones, direct monitoring, and setting the gain before you play, every time.
· 9 min read -
How to play music with someone online, in real time
Two musicians can genuinely play together over the internet, and the thing that decides whether it works is distance, not software. Light in fibre costs about 1 ms of round trip per 100 km, and no product repeals that. Inside a city or a neighbouring one it feels like playing together. Across an ocean it does not, and any service that tells you otherwise is selling something.
· 8 min read