Sessionwire alternative: genuinely lossless, cheaper to host

Sessionwire is a polished, ambitious product, and if you are looking for a Sessionwire alternative it is usually for one of two reasons: the hosting price for more than a single guest, or a closer look at what its audio stream actually is. This is an honest comparison with AudioTeleporter, written by the person who makes AudioTeleporter, and Sessionwire wins several of the categories below outright.

What each tool is

Sessionwire is a remote collaboration studio that runs in your browser, with a free plugin suite you install in your DAW. It carries HD video, screen sharing, remote desktop control, talkback, peer to peer file transfer, cloud storage and a messaging layer, and it is openly positioned as a replacement for a stack of tools including Zoom, Dropbox and Audiomovers.

AudioTeleporter is a single plugin on your master bus that streams your mix to listeners in a browser. It has no video, no chat and no file transfer. If you want an all in one collaboration suite, Sessionwire is a much fuller product and you should read the rest of this with that in mind.

Audio quality: check the wording carefully

Sessionwire's product page describes its stream as 48 kHz uncompressed stereo. Its own support documentation describes a setting called HQ Audio Send Bitrate, and says that members streaming HQ Audio get 256 kbps, while Studio subscribers also get the option of 400 kbps. A published blog post described transmitting audio at 48 kHz 32 bit floating over a stereo stream at 400 kbps.

Those two descriptions cannot both be right. Uncompressed 48 kHz stereo at 24 bit needs roughly 2,300 kbps, and at 32 bit float roughly 3,000 kbps. A stream that fits in 400 kbps has been compressed by a factor of six or more, and a user selectable bitrate is something only a compressed codec has. That is not a criticism of how it sounds, because 400 kbps is a high setting and reviewers rate the quality well. It is a reason to read the specification rather than the adjective, and to check it yourself on their site before you decide.

AudioTeleporter Pro streams lossless FLAC at 48 kHz. Lossless is a defined term: the decoder reconstructs the input exactly, so what your listener hears is bit for bit what left your master bus. There is no bitrate slider because there is nothing to trade away. Free and Basic use Opus at 64 and 256 kbps, and I call those compressed, because they are.

One more difference worth noting: Sessionwire's higher 400 kbps setting is a Studio tier feature, so audio quality is tied to your plan. AudioTeleporter's lossless tier is €5.99 a month.

What it costs to host

Sessionwire's free tier lets you join other people's sessions but not host your own; creating an invite link needs a subscription. Basic is $9 a month or $99 a year and lets you host exactly one guest, per their pricing page. Studio is $29 a month or $299 a year and raises that to up to 50 people, and adds session recording, remote desktop and the higher bitrate. Business is custom priced.

• AudioTeleporter Free: host 1 listener, Opus 64 kbps, no card and no subscription
• AudioTeleporter Basic: €3.99 a month, 5 listeners
• AudioTeleporter Pro: €5.99 a month, 20 listeners, lossless FLAC
• Yearly billing gives you two months free

So if your job is to let a handful of people hear a mix, the shapes are quite different. Sessionwire asks $9 a month before you can host anyone at all, and $29 a month before you can host more than one person. AudioTeleporter hosts one listener free, five for €3.99, and twenty in lossless for €5.99. If you also need video and screen sharing, that comparison stops being fair, because AudioTeleporter has neither.

How listeners join

Sessionwire is genuinely excellent here and it would be dishonest to claim an advantage. Guests open an invite link in a browser with no account, no download and no plugin, and its documentation says so in several places. That is the same promise AudioTeleporter makes.

There is one real difference. Sessionwire requires a Chromium browser, and its system requirements state that Safari and Firefox are not supported. On a Mac or an iPhone, where Safari is the default, a guest who has been told they need to install nothing may still have to install Chrome. AudioTeleporter's player does not restrict listeners to Chromium, and each listener picks their own buffer between 50 milliseconds and a second so someone on hotel WiFi can trade a little delay for stability.

Where Sessionwire is the better choice

• Video. HD multi party video, screen sharing and remote desktop control are core features. AudioTeleporter has none of these.
• Talkback, and Automute, which ducks the talkback mics the moment your DAW plays back. AudioTeleporter is one direction only, so your listeners cannot speak to you through it.
• Recording, in several modes including isolated audio files, on the Studio tier.
• Big sessions. Up to 50 people on Studio, and an audience mode for far more on Business. AudioTeleporter caps at 20.
• File transfer and cloud storage for session assets.
• One subscription instead of several tools, which is a real saving if you currently pay for a video call service and a streaming plugin separately.

What AudioTeleporter does not do

• Stereo only. No Dolby Atmos, no 5.1 or 7.1. Sessionwire is stereo only too, so neither tool suits immersive work.
• No video, no screen share, no remote desktop, no chat, no file transfer.
• No talkback and no recording.
• No real time jamming. Sessionwire is refreshingly blunt that internet latency is not a solved problem, and that applies to both of us.

Which should you choose

Choose Sessionwire if the session is a meeting as much as a playback. If you want to see the artist's face, share your screen, drop a reference file into the chat and record the whole thing, it does all of that in one place and the free plugin suite is a genuinely generous starting point.

Choose AudioTeleporter if what you actually need is for a few people to hear your mix properly, without paying $29 a month for the privilege of hosting more than one of them, and without any ambiguity about what the audio has been through on the way. Lossless costs €5.99 a month for twenty listeners, the free tier hosts one listener with no card, and your client opens a link in whatever browser they already have.