[mac freak]

Question:
I have a band with a guitarist who these days, unfortunately, lives about 1000 miles away from myself and the other member. What's cool is, GarageBand 3 supports direct recording from iChat; he can plug in his guitar, set it to be iChat's "microphone," I hit record, and I can literally record his raw guitar tracks directly into GarageBand from across the country. Thing is, the quality from a normal iChat stream is less than stellar. Is there any way to force iChat to send higher-bitrate streams? We wouldn't be using these recordings as finals by any means, but it'd be nice to have higher-quality placeholders until the summer when we can all work in the same room.

Does anyone know if this is possible? I'm doubtful, but hell, it's worth a shot.

[Grrr]

iChat, great though it is, is never going to be able to send good quality audio like that.
You could try (Or rather your friend) Apples QuickTime broadcaster. Its free, and can transmit at a variety of bit rates, and in stereo too.

[SSharon]

I think for best results he will have to record his end alone and then send it to you. I just don't see and streaming method that will work well enough for you.

[Detrius]

Originally Posted by SSharon

I think for best results he will have to record his end alone and then send it to you. I just don't see and streaming method that will work well enough for you.

It would be possible to get a high enough quality stream, but the biggest problem you will have is latency. You won't be able to get a low enough round-trip latency for both sides to be able to play music together.