Using Ableton to effect an enitre band live????

[HunterHawes]

Hi I was wondering if it were possible to effect an entire band in ableton during a live show. Basically I want to be the live sound engineer and use effect racks on every track and also on the master track.

The band set up is

4 mics for singers
2 guitars that would be mic'ed up and running in
1 drum pad
1 bass direct in


Could I do this using a multiple output audio interface and having each instrument on a different track I/O

would latency be to big a problem? I have a macbook pro.


It is a concept we are drawing up but the execution is troubling us. Any input would be great if you could guide us in a direction.

cheers
Hunter

[Simbosan]

This may be of interest:

http://www.youtube.com/user/abletoninc? ... vuCp1lZIBw

It's only the drum kit, but individually miked/triggered.

S

[AceLuby]

Definitely possible. You'll probably have a few milliseconds of delay, but it shouldn't be earth shattering. Just need to get the right interface with enough inputs. You can then give every one its own track and effect only single tracks (or groups of tracks like for the singers) and then have master effects to effect the whole mix.

The only problems are going to be everyone gets the same monitor mix (FOH) and it's not exactly easy to mix a good FOH mix from on stage. You could definitely overcome this, but they are things to think about.

[nylarch]

There's an interview floating around from maybe Sound on Sound with the producer Stuart Price who basically ran Madonna's whole band through Logic for a tour and mixed them live - doing filter sweeps and whatnot. I'm sure this is easier in Live. He said he had each song open as a separate Logic project and at one show the Logic engineers all came and he showed them what he was doing and they kind of went pale and said they couldn't believe it worked.

[AceLuby]

There's an interview floating around from maybe Sound on Sound with the producer Stuart Price who basically ran Madonna's whole band through Logic for a tour and mixed them live - doing filter sweeps and whatnot. I'm sure this is easier in Live. He said he had each song open as a separate Logic project and at one show the Logic engineers all came and he showed them what he was doing and they kind of went pale and said they couldn't believe it worked.

Depeche Mode (sp?) does the same thing w/ the drums through Live. It's much easier to get a decent mix off stage though. As 'part' of the band it becomes a bit more difficult.

[Khazul]

Hi I was wondering if it were possible to effect an entire band in ableton during a live show. Basically I want to be the live sound engineer and use effect racks on every track and also on the master track.

The band set up is

4 mics for singers
2 guitars that would be mic'ed up and running in
1 drum pad
1 bass direct in


Could I do this using a multiple output audio interface and having each instrument on a different track I/O

would latency be to big a problem? I have a macbook pro.


It is a concept we are drawing up but the execution is troubling us. Any input would be great if you could guide us in a direction.

cheers
Hunter

Biggest headache will be the monitoring arrangement for the band. Latency to the PA isnt a headache is they cant hear it, however latency in the monitorig between what they play and what they hear could completely screw up what they are playing if its too much.

For something like this, I would be looking at RME MADI style audio hardware, or perhaps a fireface (400/800/UFX) to get very low latency through the software.

[luddy]

I run my band through Live with a FF400. vocals, bass DI, live keyboards, and sometimes drums, all with fx, as well as backing tracks. Often the drums are mixed at the FOH and blended into our submix, depends on the particulars of the show, what kind of sends and returns are available, etc.

We have a wireless mic receiver and wireless IEM transmitter along with the FF400 mounted in a small rack.

No one in the band (including lead singer) has ever complained about the latency of the monitoring. I suppose it depends on your music and what kind of places you play, but in our case there is usually enough commotion and slapback from the PA etc. that the latency of the monitoring is the least of our worries.

Sometimes it's a little dicey to figure out how to patch into the FOH console. Most of the time it's no problem; there are DI boxes (or simply some cables for carrying line-level signals) on the stage and we just send signals through them to the console. If the drums are being mixed at the console, then to get the drums into the monitor mix we either need a return from the console or else (what I've been doing lately) we just throw up a mic of our own on the drum kit.

We usually tweak balances only during sound check and leave the levels alone during the show -- there is automation in our live sets controlling track levels, effects, etc. and over time we've gotten the balances to the point where they seem to work pretty well. In Live I leave the track faders with no automation so that they can be used to tweak balances at the sound check, and put automation in gain plugs or effect sends etc.

If the FOH wants to mix things during the show then we just send them more individual parts rather than a complete submix; but there's a limit to how many parts we can send from the FF (and usually a limit to how many sends we have from the stage anyway).

I recently put an SSD into my macbook pro, trying to take as many precautions as possible against vibration and knocks.

-Luddy

[Coupe70]

A question to those of you who do this:
With how much latency does it work for you ?

[AceLuby]

A question to those of you who do this:
With how much latency does it work for you ?

We've got about 10-15ms of latency and it seems to still work for us.

[luddy]

A question to those of you who do this:
With how much latency does it work for you ?

I typically have something like 7ms of round-trip latency. When I was first doing it, I pushed my FF to 32 samples of buffer and it worked OK, but eventually I thought it was unnecessary to push things so hard, better to give the computer plenty of breathing room.

-Luddy

[Dragonbreath]

I have been working on a very similar concept.

Latency is the biggest issue here as is the number of inputs and outputs.

It is totally possible

I have acheived roundtrip latency of 4,75ms with my saffire pro40 with 8 ins and 8 outs at 24 bits 96khz and 128 samples on my macbook pro
no clicks in audio
I had only a few effets on the tracks as in this scenario I was recording a band only had compressors and limiters on. my cpu count wasnt that high, (maybe 20% dont quite remember)
The some the outs were sent out to headphones amps for individual monitor headphone mixes (was using sends as monitor buses in ableton)

The threshold of the human ear in terms of latency is about 10ms, more then 20 ms forget about it

at 4,75ms I cant even tell its there at all

Essentially get a good interface with at least 8 ins and outs and your good...

Then you can send the 8 seperate out to FOH and let them worry about monitors

[friend_kami]

10-15ms latency?
you can work with that?
i could never work with 10+ ms latency, too much.
try doing fast arpeggios with that.
no thanks.
definitively a problem.

[3phase]

A question to those of you who do this:
With how much latency does it work for you ?

I typically have something like 7ms of round-trip latency. When I was first doing it, I pushed my FF to 32 samples of buffer and it worked OK, but eventually I thought it was unnecessary to push things so hard, better to give the computer plenty of breathing room.

-Luddy

32 samples buffer.. for in and out and fx = 96.. is above 2 ms what should be good enough if the monitors are close by, because any meter away from the monitors adds another 3 ms of latency..

so can be difficult fro drummers they are used to have theire sound pretty direct... also guitarists that are used to crawl into theier amp might suffer.

maybe in combination with an in ear monitoring system?

i would say everything above 5-6 ms total latency gets disturbing.. 11 ms is my personal max where i am of the hook somehow.. at least fun wise