What Antiphon is
Antiphon is a NINJAM client shaped as an audio plugin -- VST3, CLAP, and a standalone application. You insert it in your DAW, connect to a public server, and play with whoever is in the room.
Your own signal passes through with no added delay. Everyone else arrives one interval later, locked to the beat, and each of them can be routed to its own output bus so your DAW records the jam as separate stems.
Every other NINJAM client is a standalone application that owns your sound card. Antiphon is the plugin, so the jam happens in the session you were already working in -- with your own effects, your own monitoring, and your own recorder.
Read this before you decide it is broken
NINJAM does something unusual. You hear everyone else one interval late -- typically several seconds. This is not a bug, not a misconfiguration, and not something to tune away. It is the whole idea, and Your first jam explains why it turns out to be musical rather than annoying.
If you take one thing from this guide, take that.
Where things stand
Antiphon is public beta, built from source. Honestly:
| Works | Connecting, transmitting, receiving, multi-channel, stem routing, chat, voting, the metronome, DAW tempo sync |
| Verified | Interoperability with the official NINJAM reference client, measured -- interval grid, transmit alignment, audio in both directions, chat |
| Tested on | Linux, CLAP format, one DAW, plus the standalone |
| Not yet | Windows and macOS builds, packaged installers, VST3 testing, a release |
If you are on Linux and comfortable with CMake, it works today. If you are waiting for a download, that is still ahead.
Where to go next
- Getting started -- build it, install it, connect.
- Your first jam -- what the interval is, and why.
- Recording the jam as stems -- the reason this is a plugin.
- Syncing with your DAW -- tempo, transport, and practising alone.
- Accessibility -- what works, and what is unproven.
- Troubleshooting -- when something is wrong.