Preparing work for live performane on a low spec computer

[wotnwhy]

Hello all, I hope you can advise me on the best approach for this

I have a set of tunes that I will be playing out live next month. But my laptop is old and slow, and can't process some parts of the tunes fast enough for me to trust playing them as they are live.
Each tune is based around a just drums, bass and keys with minimal sound effects. So I was thinking of exporting each part seperately and then playing the tunes as 4 audio tracks as opposed to 6 or 7 vst's with umpteen effects. And then as the 'live' aspect I would have control of mutes, eq, and a simple delay and reverb on the send channels (I'm doing a dub sort of thing, btw). It's not the way I want to be doing it, but with the timeframe and equipment I have I think it's the most I'll be able to manage for this gig.

As this area is all a bit new to me I hope this is where you help can come in.
What should I be exporting each audio file as (aiff, wav?) and what quality (don't want more than necessary), also I've hear people say the word stems, is this just another word for it or is that something different? And would it be best to have all the songs as one project, or a different one for each?

Thanks for any help/knowledge bestowed

[Tarekith]

Go with the audio track route.

[bosonHavoc]

yes audio is key..
for the warp mode repitch uses the lest amount of cpu cause it doesn't do any warping
shared effects on sends
verbs, delays
you can set the return track to be pre or post fader too.
which is really handy for doing verbed out dubby stuff
filter sweeps do not take much cpu and are great effects

you can do allot with mutes, volumes, filters, delay, and verb

and feedback loops

i used to perform live with live 6 on an amd 1.5 ghz machine
people where surprised i could even do anything lol

[Warrior Bob]

Tarekith speaks truth: no sense doing anything in realtime that you don't have to.

Personally, I'd bounce every track down to 16 bit, 44.1Khz wav or aiff files ("cd-quality"), load them into a new Live set, and then add effects where you want them. You'll have to do some realtime processing if you're using EQs and effects, but your system ought to be able to handle that especially if it doesn't have to synthesize the sounds.

[wotnwhy]

Thanks for the responses people!

Only one Q left, would it be better to have all the songs as one project or all seperate? Opening up the next project after each song?

Thanks again

[Tarekith]

Depending on how many songs you have, no reason you can't use them all in one project. Here's how I do it:

http://tarekith.com/ableton-live-apc40-live-pa-set-up/

[wotnwhy]

Tarekith, that is awesome and exactly what I need/want to be doing! Great step by step. I thank you!