Obviously there are a lot of people here who use their laptops live. I am one of them. When playing live, my Mac (Reaper) plays various .wav files and samples etc.... This works well for me at the moment as all my 'live' keyboard parts come from my Fantom X8 and Kurzweil PC3.

I am gigging more and more at the moment and the size of my current rig (particularly the X8) is becoming a real PITA. I have considered replacing it with a lighter keyboard but there is nothing around at the moment that excites me at all. Which got me thinking why not get another laptop, soundcard and a controller keyboard and use stand alone soft-synths. This would be much lighter and give me far more flexability. Also, if i'm careful, shouldn't cost alot more that I planned to spend on another keyboard to replace my Fantom X8. I plan to keep the PC3 as my main board.

Does anyone else use this approach? Or do most people use something like Mainstage to achieve this?

I am reluctant to use one laptop to do both jobs unless someone can convince me other wise.

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And Bagpuss, once he was asleep, was just a saggy old cloth cat.

To qualify my opinion, I am no expert, but I do use a laptop live. Well, I have been through every configuration of equipment that I have got to try and make my rig as manageable as possible which has included trying to use a laptop. Basically every way I have tried things has been an almighty pain. Trying to connect up a controller keyboard to a laptop with a USB interface is messy: a laptop, keyboard and interface all strung together with various wires.

I know this is not really an adequate answer, but I got so fed up with just the amount of boxes I was taking to just a rehearsal I decided to go minimal and say stuff it, I will take one keyboard and if I can't make the right noise with that I can't make the right noise. So I broke the shackles of a big 88 note master keyboard, small secondary keyboard, laptop, interface and sampler and bought a decidedly plastic Roland Juno G. I know it is not the height of luxury but I am a player with shall we say 'basic' skills. I decided that if I cannot play something using the basic sampler, synth engine and sequencer on that, then I am not going to play it. Personally I love the freedom it has given me and the ease of setting up. I also tried using just a 37 key Akai Miniak and in some ways had the same feeling of liberation accepting that I could only make certain wibbly, squidgey noises - no piano, no Rhodes etc etc.

On the other hand, I did have limited joy from the laptop, a CME UF7 fitted with a Firewire card and the laptop balanced on top, but I was still after a one-box solution. The laptop running Cubase to record rehearsals and play back backing tracks and Kore to manage plugins was no more flaky than any other combination of hardware that I tried. I just was fed up carrying nine boxes into the rehearsal room. I just wanted to play and go.

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www.slowworm.net

I occasionally work with a band live who does this. In fact, the keyboard player uses his normal everyday MacBook Pro. He's got 2 lighter-weight controller keyboards that he feeds back to his mac which control mainstage, and outputs using a firewire interface. He's got a patch for every song and he just switches to the next patch. Also, the bass player has a set of midi bass pedals which link back to the mac for Taurus style noises.

Soundcheck with the mac.
Disconnects and uses it for internet/mail in the dressing room.
30-40 mins before showtime he hooks it up, checks it's working fully.
Does gig.
Disconnects, takes mac with him, goes home/hotel.

It's never failed him on the gigs I've been with him on.

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www.exaviormusic.com
www.manninmusic.com Music Teacher, Isle of Man

Edited by Exavior Music (23/06/12 05:39 PM)

I used to gig with a fully expanded Kurzweil K2600X and a Virus C. Good keyboards, but heavy, and they used to crash - not often, but they took a while to come back up when they did. Oh and I used to have to bring a mixer quite a bit of the time as it's common to only get one stereo line to the desk at smaller gigs.

The last 2.5 years or so I've been using a Macbook Pro and Mainstage, an E-MU x-board 61 and a Studiologic weighted controller, the Logic synths, u-he Zebra (that's all!!!) - and I've been much happier. It's not even a very new MBP - 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo. (Yes I want a quad i7!)

The gear is easier to lug, I can use the same sounds I am using in my Logic productions with my keyboards, it never crashes - even when I had the MBP topple off the stand and crash on the floor - it was still running, I plugged it back in, and was playing again in a matter of seconds. (I do have a plastic external case on the MBP, and the MBP was a little beaten up by this incident, but that's pretty good as far as I'm concerned.)

On top of all this, programming soft synths with a mouse much easier than programming hardware synths, and programming splits and layers in main stage is a doddle - so much easier than layering on a hardware synth or with fiddly controller keyboard menus.

One tip that you might find interesting - I've actually found that you can get the best latency by coming out of the MBP via SPDIF optical and using an audio interface as an external converter - the internal buffers are very small, and this way you bypass the much bigger USB and Firewire hardware buffers. I run at 64 samples and get good responsiveness, particularly from my older system. Obviously you need an interface with an optical SPDIF input, but I'm surprised more people don't do this.

Cheers
Grant

Quote grantozolins:

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you can get the best latency by coming out of the MBP via SPDIF optical and using an audio interface as an external converter - the internal buffers are very small, and this way you bypass the much bigger USB and Firewire hardware buffers. I run at 64 samples and get good responsiveness, particularly from my older system. Obviously you need an interface with an optical SPDIF input, but I'm surprised more people don't do this.

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I did not know this! Can you recommend a SPDIF audio interface?

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Spanky