If you’re a musician, podcaster, actor or anybody who does anything creative with other human beings, you probably remember struggling at some point over these past few years to work remotely using videoconferencing tools like Zoom or Meet. You also probably remember how disappointed you were: glitchy audio, unstable connections and high network latency meant you couldn’t play in time with other musicians. And while it’s easier to get together in person these days, those problems persist whenever you do need to get creative work done online.
Elk is a Swedish company that aims to solve all of these problems with a novel approach to networking. It prioritizes audio timing over everything else to give musicians a chance to actually play together remotely, in a way that’s as satisfying — or more so — than working in the same space. We checked out the company’s hardware and software solutions, did some online jamming and recording, and talked to some power users to see if it’s a good choice for you.
Elk Live makes it possible to play music in real time with collaborators up to 620 miles away. It's still a work in progress, but it is already a great tool for bands, teachers and students or anyone looking to expand their musical community.
What is Elk, exactly?
Elik is an audio and video conferencing solution for musicians, consisting of three things: a hardware box, called the Bridge; a native app called Elk Live Studio that lets you use any audio interface to get your audio on and off of the internet; and the Elk Audio OS, the back-end networking-prioritized operating system that makes it all work.
How does it work?
The short answer is that Elk does the opposite of what most remote work and videoconferencing systems do: It optimizes its connection for audio and lets video frames fall where they may. Plus, in order to save processing cycles and minimize latency, the audio signal is sent uncompressed, meaning you get a full-resolution, better-than-CD-quality signal (the system runs at 24-bit, 48 kHz only). This is the opposite of the approach taken by most videoconferencing apps, which sacrifice cycles to maintain smooth video and preserve audio/video sync as best as possible while using the smallest possible amount of data (which makes sense when your main job is to handle millions of users having meetings).
What we liked about it
The really great thing about Elk (and this is true whether you’re using the hardware Bridge or your own interface and the native software) is that so long as you stick to the company’s basic recommendations (or don’t stray too far from them) the system works as advertised. Elk comes closer than any other service I’ve tried to providing the feeling of playing with other human beings in the same space — and that’s quite amazing.
It really, really works
In our testing, musical collaborators were able to play along in time not just with one another, but with loops and samples at either end, and to record to connected DAWs at both ends of an Elk connection. It’s really a game changer for musicians who work remotely, as so many do nowadays.
“Hooking up the Bridge felt like magic,” says Australian guitarist, consultant and YouTube gear influencer Leon Todd. “We’d tried other services that promised similar results, and network and hardware shortcomings were always a stopper.”
You really can really play comfortably in real time with other people many miles away — it’s a huge difference from trying to do the same via mainstream teleconferencing apps like Zoom. Those have their place, but for music, Elk is a giant leap forward.
Even though Todd and his bandmates still rehearse in person regularly, he tells us that Elk has removed the sense of pressure from writing sessions. “We use it as a way to workshop,” he says, “without the feeling that we can only go until a certain time.” Similarly, if Todd or one of his collaborators has an idea and wants to work on developing it, there’s no need to book a session. “There’s 35 minutes in the middle of the day? Why not take advantage of that? I like that potential there to work differently.”
Metal guitarist and YouTube gear influencer Taylor Danley initially turned to Elk out of necessity: “During the pandemic, my band was working on an EP, and we were using it mostly to write, but I was pretty surprised by how well it worked and how we were [able] to capture those moments. Sure there’s still a disconnect from actually being in the room, but until we have augmented reality…”
As I’ve been using the system over the past few months, I’ve been able to have entirely satisfying jam sessions with collaborators from approximately 100 to several hundred miles away. Elk’s Bj?rn Ehlers tells me that the suggested limit for optimal performance is around 1,000 kilometers (about 620 miles), but users have been able to conduct sessions at much longer distances.
Elk’s connection quality is good enough that Leon Todd has been using it to work with his guitar students — and not just making do as so many music teachers have felt they were doing with Zoom lessons. “I’ve gotten a few of my students onto the native app, and it’s worked well —?the better audio quality is such that I can even offer consultation on tone. I can really hear them playing, and with the internal mixer I can sit there and listen and comment and we can have a pleasant experience. The one issue is having to flick between the two camera modes.”
If you’re a music teacher who struggled to find a workable solution for Zoom lessons during the pandemic (and perhaps you’ve stayed with some remote-only students) you’ll really appreciate Elk’s advances over mainstream video calling services.
It’s social
Taylor Danley thinks that Elk’s lasting impact may come from the social aspect. “It really is almost a social platform. There’s a massive potential for reigniting the underground music scene … I don’t even know what the main venue where people are finding musicians is now and [Elk] has so much potential.”
What Danley is referring to is that once you’re registered on the service, you make a profile, and if you make it public, you can contact anyone else using the service, whether they’re using the native app or Bridge and set up a jam session. (You’re obviously free to ignore or decline requests as you would with any other social media service.)
It’s free (for now)
Since Elk is still under development — the move to the native app kicked off a new phase in the company’s strategy for the system, and the subscription fee Elk had been charging for Bridge users was dropped — Elk is free, as in beer. This is great since the service is now open to anyone with a computer, some musical ideas and an internet connection.
What didn’t we like about it
Overall Elk is a fantastic service, and while there’s not much to actually dislike about it, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Elk works well, though the internet may not be entirely up to the task
Elk’s developers recommend that for the best experience users have at least 10 Mbps up and down connection with a ping time of under 10 ms — on par with what you’re likely to find in an urban area, though if you’re in the sticks you may run into longer ping times. Given that, these are totally reasonable requirements (you can check out the whole list of suggestions for best results on Elk’s site). Basically, you want to make sure you have good internet service!
To make sure you have the fastest possible connection, Elk works much better over an ethernet connection. It’s possible to get things working over Wi-Fi, but in our experience was significantly less stable and we ran into service dropouts with some regularity.
Taylor Danley reports similarly, telling us that his band got “dramatically better results after our drummer (who had been working over a Wi-Fi connection in their home studio) upgraded to fiber internet and got a wired connection and a newer machine.” So in many of the home studio environments where Elk is likely to be used, getting wired access hooked up might be worth the redecorating.
That said, one of our testers lives in a semi-rural area, with ping times that are regularly more than double the suggested maximum, and still got totally acceptable performance using Elk. There’s a tad of discernible latency — but it’s not much different in feel than standing across a large room at a safe distance from a loud drummer. It’s still night and day comparing even “poor” Elk system performance with trying to play over a Zoom or Facetime call.
No native Windows support (yet)
Right now, native app support for Elk is MacOS only. Bj?rn Ehlers told us that Windows support is coming for 2024, and for now Windows users can still access Elk using the Bridge hardware.
Elk is constantly evolving and some features feel unfinished
The Elk service is a work in progress, which means it includes a lot of functions that should grow over time (indeed they’ve changed quite a bit just over the months we’ve been using it!), and some things you might expect aren’t yet included, so you might find that it has a bit of a loose, unfinished feel.
Right now you’ll find a lot of blank real estate on the mixer page. You’re limited to a couple of input channels (and while you can use any interface, routing options is still limited to what’s available on the Bridge). We also had some struggles connecting other USB-C audio interfaces, even using core OS-compliant models without drivers — we always were able to get things working in the end, but it occasionally took a few attempts.
This of course is not out of the ordinary for audio software these days? — you’ll regularly log in and find an update waiting, both lots of bug fixes and feature tweaks. It’s great that these are rolling out on a regular basis.
The native app is very promising. On the one hand, it lets anyone with a computer (and the ability to connect to Ethernet, for best results) get started, but it also lets you use any audio interface. We tested primarily with a Boss GT-1000 Core effects processor and multichannel interface, which makes a great front end for using Elk (and a very portable one, if you’re, say, on the road for work and still want to make it to band practice). Vocalists can hook up a USB microphone, which also works well. You can also use a podcast mixer or any other audio interface — really whatever fits into your workflow.
We would like to see functions like recording into or playing back from a DAW get more refined — right now they are a bit obscure to set up and could stand a little further refinement. “The thing I’m really waiting for,” Danley says, “is plug -in support and the ability to use more inputs.” This would definitely make using Elk for everything from using computer-based instruments in jam sessions to remote recording sessions much simpler.
Luckily, Ehlers tells us, this functionality is on the way. The company is actively at work on a plug-in Elk version that would run within your recording software, making routing audio for recordings or multiple users much simpler. Along with the coming Windows version, this should make it much easier for musicians to get onto the platform.
All of this should be on the way next year, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, it’s still very worthwhile, these issues aside.
Bottom line
If you’ve ever attempted to play music with other people online, you’ll find that using Elk is a downright incredible experience, frankly. Having tried a lot of networked performance tools over the years, I haven’t encountered anything as simple, good-sounding and just plain functional. At the current price of admission (using the service with the native app is free as the company fine-tunes the platform), there’s no reason not to download and try it if you’re a musician at all interested in collaborating remotely for any reason.
