Ableton Forum

It kinda was a disaster. First, I assumed the PA would be stereo. It was mono. So I put left and right both into the board. I knew there wold be phasing issues, but I thought just one channel would be worse.

Then about 3/4 thru the show. My NI Audio Kontrol 1 interface went silent. It lost connection to the Macbook. I unplugged in the USB cable and plugged in again. It did not show up. We had to stop the show. (I did not want to reboot, I guess I could have shut down Live and restarted, but that would have been too long). I tested the set so many times and it never happened in rehearsal. Maybe the louder vibrations did something to the USB connection or cable. I don't know.

Finally, after the show I was told that most people could only hear the drummer I play with. I did a sound check, but something must have changed by the time we went on. Amazingly, no one told me while playing. It sounded great on stage through the monitors though.

So anyone have the NI Audio Kontrol 1 drop out during a set??

Anyone want to buy my Macbook Pro 13 inch 2.53 Ghz machine? It has a warranty until June 2010, yes, it's almost brand new and it has not scratches or blemishes. I think I'm going the MPC route, I dunno. I just don't want to get caught in that situation again.

That sucks, but live and learn. Selling it is a bit of a knee jerk reaction don't you think?

Shit happens although I can't say that has ever happened to me. The easiest way to save yourself
in these situations is have a 15 minute mix that you made and burn it to a CD or iPod and make sure you can hook it up to the mixer incase shit happens.

I think selling your laptop is kinda silly. It was your FIRST gig. I'm sure you have a lot more to learn about Live
and the software and using laptops live. I know if something goes wrong on my laptop I can pretty much assess and fix it
with in a few seconds. And if its a full crash well that's what I have the CD/iPod for. But I don't crash often.

What's in your live set, 3party plugs? cracks? ect ect

+1 for the comments above me..

Im not a mac guy, i use pc. I use to have similar problems and i use a presonus firebox.. All i can say, is that if your machine is strictly for music purposes, make sure its optimized for music purposes. If your using your everyday laptop for music, your guaranteed to have problems. It tooo SOOOO much tweaking for me to get my machine to run in the optimal state it runs in now, which seems to be working flawlessly.. but thats PC, im not a mac guy, i dunno how they work.. Dont sell it.

+1 on the 2 comments above.

If you go live, dedicate your laptop for music only. Once it works properly, don't change anything on your setup!

Once you figure out what happened to you on that gig, well you know... this is what you call experience!

considering it was your FIRST gig. you have ALOT of trial and error to go to figure out what is casuing your problems and how to fix it...
first step is optimization like i said,

Charge to your first experienced. Everybody will go through it.

When I play Live (mixing at a Club) I don't use any external soundcard. The internal card of a Macbook Pro is good enough.

Gah bad luck ! :/ I bought a MBP so I wouldnt have to deal with the Windows blue screen which plagued me on more than one gig and I have to say its been solid as a rock (with the exception of when I installed the first release of Live 8 !!). Now Lives stable again things are good again and it seems rock solid. Not sure what the craic is with the NI device but it seems really unlucky.

+1 in taking CDs to your next gig !! The first rule of 'live gig club' = contigency plans !! ;D

As far as my Live set, all legit, no cracks, very stable plugs:
1 Impulse
2 Zerba 2s
1 Kore Player (Jazz Acoustic Bass)
1 audio (samples)
1 kontakt 2 (wurly sample)
i GSI VB3
1 True Pianos
Send 1: Guitar Rig LE
Send 2: reverb in eco mode

Only 1 of the last 3 tracks(wurly,VB3,piano) is active at one time. Those are what I play from my controller. Cpu never goes above 32. Live was still cranking audio fine. All the meters were still going after the interface died.

As far as optimizations. Nothing runs at startup except the Audio Kontrol app. I had Bluetooth and Airport turned off. I don't think that was the problem. I don't load my audio computers with junk. I'm very careful. And it's been fine rehearsal after rehearsal.

If I do gig with it again, I will bring an iPod in case of failure. It's just that I specifically bought this Mac so I wouldn't have this type of problem...very frustrating.

I surprised no one has had this problem with the Audio Kontrol.

+1 in taking CDs to your next gig !! The first rule of 'live gig club' = contigency plans !! ;D

+1

and sorry to hear, i somehow guess it was just plain bad luck.

Studio and stage are two different worlds......In the studio the most things works....and on stage theres so many factors that can ruin your sound/gig like an bad soundengineer, bad accoustics and and and.....

hennessey wrote: It lost connection to the Macbook.

It just works

sorry to hear that, but yeah this is what happens with computers...

good luck for the next gig

and yeah, bringing ipods or a mix on a cd is always a good idea, just in case

Hennessy, I have and AK1 and have never had an issue with it. I have used it for loads of live gigs and it has always performed really well.
However, when I was researching the AK1 I read about some issues with audio dropping out and the actual device glitching. If I were you, I'd send it back to NI and get a new one. It seems to be the root of the problem...