Ableton Forum

Hi

Hope everyone’s well.

I’m a songwriter and performer but not very tech knowledgeable.

Looking to get a new MacBook Pro and big VSTs like Kontakt for production and playing live with my band.

If playing live keyboards at gigs from big vsts such as Kontakt, is it better to have your sample/sound libraries on an external SSD? Or get the biggest size internal SSD you can afford and have everything on there?

I’m thinking on the one hand having an external SSD frees up your internal SSD for performance.

On the other hand an external SSD is another thing to go wrong e.g. the lead gets knocked out or anything else.

Most of the info I’ve seen online says put libraries on a separate drive. However, they all seem to be referring to production rather than doing live gigs.

The guy at Apple said he puts everything on his internal drive for ease. Lovely fella and I’m sure the fact that if I follow his advice I will be spending at least £400 more is just coincidental. Sarcasm aside it might be as they’re not on commission apparently.

I like the idea of having everything on the internal SSD but don’t want to do if it’s a big no no.

Many cheers

Riv

For live use I'd recommend a bigger internal SSD. If you are just storing mp3s, songs, you might not neccesarily need a SSD though but for quickly loading instruments, SSDs are lifesavers.

Internal drives will help reduce setup times, reduce chances of hard drive getting unplugged or what not, and less pieces of equipment to remember to bring.

Cheers all great points, I think I’ll have to fork out and get a 2tb SSD.

For gigging, which to be honest is rare for me these days even without lockdown, I put everything on the internal drive. Not only is it less to carry but a failure is more likely to happen when there are two drives to potentially fail. It also means I can image the entire system and restore it very quickly from a backup drive (which I take with me) if I need to.