"saw the post about 'time delay' - is there a getaround for that?"

Not until Quantum Physics makes more advances, I suspect... Some delay may be caused by your ISP setting a low QoS (Quality of Service) on such traffic, I don't know what ISPs would do this or how to improve it, etc. Some ISPs are wanting people to pay for such 'improved services' too, I suppose.

I remember talking to my US relatives years ago on landline phone with delays of a couple of seconds. If you are - like the old Paltalk sessions - all listening to one performer in turn I don't see how that is much of a problem. I don't think it is possible to have simultaneous 'sessions with people performing simultaneously' until progress happens with laws of physics involving the speed of light over large terrestrial differences! :-)

I do know that there are some advanced SW packages in development to allow musos to sync performances over the web, but I know nothing about them, I think they are in development for Linux systems only.

Skype, for what it does, is free, and works sufficiently. You can pay for advanced Skype features.

I know Skype details of 6 of us and have passed that info on - I know of about a dozen other mudcatters who allegedly have Skype, but I do not have their precise connection details - just searching can reveal many spurious responses, and sometimes multiple responses for an individual who appears to have signed up more than once, so I can't guess which contact is your current correct one.

The Paltalk system effectively died (for me) when they no longer supported Win98 - I do not know if they deal with Mac, or Linux - it also seemed to end up as just a massive number of porn channels too... :-)