Live Show setup question. PLEASE HELP!!!

weaveofkev · Post by **weaveofkev** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:17 am

So ok, you guys have always been of great help in the past. I am in a San Francisco electronic/electro/indie band. We're getting a lot of shows and I'm starting to worry about glitchy issues. My band primarily relys on my laptop(macbook pro), an audio interface(motu ultra-lite) & Ableton during practice and live shows as we depend on the sequenced tracks. Our drummer plays along with a click track through a cue mix and headphones.
Every once in blue moon, during practice, we will hear a skip/glitch sound from the laptop. And. During soundcheck from our last show, we ran through a song and suddenly the Motu decided to change the output setting in which the music dropped out. WTF? I didn't touch the computer or Motu at all. So of course I am dreading the day this happens or may happen in a live setting. This is what bad dreams are made of.
So my question is..
What is the safest, wisest way to avoid this issue as an electronic band?
I had an idea...I've used digital muli-track recorders before and have never had an issue with skips and glitches. But I've never used them in a live setting. Should I make a final mix of the sequenced tracks and transfer them to a digital multi-track recorder? But I also need to figure out a way send a click track to my drummer at the same time. What options do I have?
Please help me!!

freshdrumma · Post by **freshdrumma** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:38 am

i think that you only need to find a workable system, experiment with the buffer size until you don`t find a setting that works for what you do, create a clean profile that you only use for live
put a lot of ram in your mac, and be sure to be running the right version of the motu drivers for your machine and operating system.
i never had a crash until my system was working at 80%, and someone from the crowd sent me a picture of myself playing from his cellphone to my computer via Bluetooth! bloody bastard! now bluetooth and airport are always off when i`m live

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 2:25 pm

The key is to have your songs mixed down to as few tracks as possible with as little running effects as possible. And of course maximum RAM helps out and plenty of free space on your hard drive. I've heard something like at least 10% of your hard drive should be available.

I know this doesn't help but I've seen a ton of complaints and issues on here with the Macbook Pro and Ultralite combination.

siliconarc · Post by **siliconarc** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:34 pm

we have a similar setup toi you, using a focusrite saffire le. no probs (yet).
but when we started out, we used cubase5 on my old powerbook, with:

- all audio tracks bounced down to L-R
- simple GM drum pattern on a midi track acting as the click track
- a usb-to-midi cable to connect the mac to a crappy drum machine
- the drum machine's audio-out to an old hi-fi amp sat next to the drummer

the drummer just plugged his cans into the amp to get the click track. no external audio card needed, just used the mac's built-in audio. rock solid and it worked great, and never let us down. the only time things went wrong was when i forgot to plug the laptop into the mains, and the battery ran out mid set. AWESOME.

pulsoc · Post by **pulsoc** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:56 pm

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=75764

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:06 pm

It is very strange that the MOTU changed it's settings. The only time I've seen something like this was when I had powered down the system, brought it back up, and there was a 'disagreement' between what was configured directly in the MOTU setup software vs. what was configured in Live.

The advice about most up to date drivers and finding the best buffer settings is key (although MOTU did have a thing where even one of their download updates was buggy). Your skip/glitch may be a result of a slower and/or fuller hard disk as well as buffers: defrag/optimize your hard disk speek, and you may find that loading clips into RAM will help.

The most reliable thing you can do when you have a band is the ol' redundant systems riff: multiple computers, one 'live', one 'backup', that you can switch between. It may be cost prohibitive and even a little overkill, but that's what the pros do.

Cache · Post by **Cache** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:12 pm

hahah. the ole forget to plug in the mains. done that one. thankfully it was a chilled enough party (20 people or so) and i was dj'ing. the sound just started getting horribly distorted as the juice almost ran out but i was quick enough to get the power cable in before standby...phew!!!

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:15 pm

I've been meaning to do this for ahile...I want to make a track that I can play off a portable cd player, constructed so that when/if I have a crash or glitch-out, I can put this track on that is designed to psych the crowd into thinking the glitch was an intentional part of the set... make for some intense drama in the party!

D K · Post by **D K** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:31 pm

quite often loud sub transients in live situations can cause vibration which will effect your electronics. if you haven't tried this already,
i'd suggest using some type of foam underneath your electronics to
isolate them as much as possible... ideally, underneath whatever your kit is set up on
(if you set your laptop directly on the foam it could cause heat issues).

weaveofkev · Post by **weaveofkev** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 7:35 pm

thank you all for your suggestions. I've still have 50+ gigs left on my macbook and my sequenced tracks are bounced to L-R, just to help clear things up.