i'm 100% vst for live performances and never going back to the traditional hardware synth. i play in a band with 6 other musicians, and have been playing in bands where flexibility and creativity are needed. i do cover tunes, original tunes, tunes on the fly in live performances - all done with 2 controllers and my laptop.

having said that, it did take me some time, and trial and error to fully harden my rig to achieve the required performance and reliability needed for live shows. admittedly, 100% vst isn't for everyone. here are some key learnings:

-while i run Windows 7 64 bit, Cantabile Performer and vst's are all 32 bit. the instabilities created by interop of 32bit/64bit simply weren't worth the trouble. 32 bit host and vst are perform perfectly well.

-i use 2 dumb controllers (m-audio devices are nice and cheap), however, i'm abandoning USB for my midi connectivity and moving to actual MIDI connections and relegating my USB connections for power only. lots of reasons behind this, just too much stress when a USB hub fails (i'm on my 4th USB hub) and reconfiguring my MIDI assignments in Cantabile.

-i use bootable VHD instance of Windows 7 which gives me portability of my fully configured OS for live shows. so, if my primary hard drive craps out, i have that same OS on my secondary hard drive that i can boot in to. only drawback to this is it requires at least 500 gb hard drive, so SSD isn't in the cards just yet. however, spinning media is fine for now.

-i run a huge assortment of vst including Komplete 7, Kore 2, Dimension Pro, OP-X Pro, and much more. load times vary, and can be optimized using W7's superfetch and loading/unloading sessions before a show.

bottom line, 100% vst scenario is totally doable if you know what you are doing. i do believe it offers the greatest bang for the buck, flexibility, and portability compared to traditional hw configurations. but, like i said it isn't for everyone...

Now, to get more into details.

I'm just about to switch to Win 7 with my music system. I have a new Vostro 3350 laptop which I plan to use both for normal, office work, and music. I want two separate Win 7 installations on one drive. They should not detect each other.

The solution I found is:
http://yyzyyz.blogspot.com/2010/06/truecrypt-how-to-encrypt- multiple.html
Someone might find this interesting.

Anyone's got a better idea? Tombuck wrote about his virtual hard disk booting, but it's only available in Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Win7, and they were beyond my reach.

Did anyone try to customize the Win7 installation DVD with a tool like vLite or RT7lite? Or do you just uninstall/switch off everything you don't want in a standard installation?
I used to have an XP modified with nLite and it was awesome!

If you have good experience customizing that's great of course - I would personally leave windows alone and install as is. my experience with XP already is that you don't need tuning. switch processor priority to background services (for ASIO) is all i needed to do. and i switched off any network/WLAN/bluetooth/powermanagement devices that caused trouble.

given the hardware is good (for me: thinkpad T or HP elitebook, don't know the Vostro; if you have trouble with noise, get a better power supply like the Antec two-prong one), all i need to be STABLE (more stable than some hardware I have!) is

- a great interface, preferably RME (best: multiface) or maybe echo (e.g. ioX), a good midi interface (motu, edirol)

- an excellent host, i am sure cantabile is cool, i use brainspawn forte.

- stable and well rehearsed VSTs. less is more. no experiments. for me mainly Kontakt and some u-he synths. GSI vb3 for organ.

and i keep an old laptop with its own audio and midi interface (used echo indigo pcmia card works great!) as backup. it's cheap and i am failsafe.

i would never change to a heave klunky rack setup! but you need to prepare and rehearse and don't experiment/update/change stuff once it works.

I recently moved (well, a couple years ago) from Germany to the US and left all my gear behind. After a few years of not playing I suddenly got the opportunity to join an 80s tribute band. I didn't want to spend a whole lot of money to get started again, so I went the VST route, since I had many plug ins already. And I must say, I don't want to go back to the old days of carrying around multiple keyboards, rack etc. I plug the keyboard into the computer, and I'm ready to go.

The PC is rather cheap actually. It's a mobile processor (Atom) that doesn't need cooling. 500GB SATA and 4 GB RAM. The audio interface is a Audiophile 192. I put it all into a tiny mini itx tower. Not the most powerful machine, but it does what I needed it to do. I haven't had any issues with audio drop out or so. I have and old LCD scree that I took the stand of and put it on the keyboard stand (over my main keyboard). I usually never really need to touch the interface, but I got a wireless mini keyboard/touchpad that I use if I need to. The whole thing ran under $350.

I use a m-audio 88pro, that has enough sliders and buttons that let me control anything without having to touch the computer really. I currently use Cantabile Solo, and I'm not sure I need to upgrade to performer right now (I'd like to, but I'm not sure if I want to invest more into cantabile if there's no development or if I switch to something else later).

I have all plug ins loaded into a default session that I use as a base for all songs. There are about 31 plug ins and the ones that I don't need in the session are put into sleep mode. With fast loading enabled, it takes about 2 seconds to switch.If I do need to switch really fast, I just switch to a different zone on the keyboard that is sending on a different midi channel.

The system runs very stable, but I did have cantabile crash on me a couple times. That's where the wireless touch pad comes in . It takes just a few seconds to restart cantabile and load the right session. The crashes seem to be caused by SFZ, which I use for some basic sounds. The windows eventviewer shows that sfz.dll was the module that caused the exception.

Some of the modules I use (remember, I do 80s . And I haven't found a song yet that I can't cover with these)
- Korg M1
- Korg Wavestation
- SFZ
- ORGANIZED / Spinner LE
- MrRay73
- OP-x
- MiniMoogueVA
- Synth1
- SuperwaveP8
- StringSynth
- Hexeter
- Shortcircuit (for that Sledgehammer EmulatorII sound and a couple others )
- A bunch of FX for those VSTs that don't have onboard FX: Reverb, chorsu, delay etc

If add everything up, I spend under $1000 for everything as opposed to the 15,000+ EUR I had invested 10 years back...

I've been using a Cantabile Performer setup for live work for two years now. Windows 7 64 (running Cantabile on 32bit though). No problems so far.

I don't think I'd ever go back to hardware. The main reason is that I've updated my hardware synths on a regular basis and it's a right pain to have to go through the whole repertoire and find the right sounds on the new synths. Secondly, I'd have to go to rehearsals an hour or two before the rest of the band so I could program the latest song we'd done. No more....now I progem my songs at home and just need to tweak volumes. Simple.

I've been using a 6gb i3 for the last year with ASIO4ALL drivers and it works like a dream. I've recently upgraded to a 6gb i5 and will leave the i3 as a backup. I picked up a really snazzy purpose-built laptop bag that fits two laptops. So now I just carry both laptops with me. The setups are exactly mirrored on both laptops so Cantabile files are fully compatible on both.

What brand of sound card /device are you using?

Also, are you just using Windows 7 VHD or do you have VirtualBox installed or something?

I'm not using any external sound cards. Simply the inbuilt laptop soundcard. Using the free Asio4Alk driv.ers I achieve 5ms latency

That gives you the quality of sound you need for live performance?

Do you then send an output to a sub mix of some kind?

Excellent discussion; I'll throw in (2) things:

1.) I've been in a pro situation for several years where the 'not piano' side of my playing was handled by NI's Kontakt (with soundset addons); it has been super reliable-not a single glitch that I can recall.

2.) You have a Sony laptop, and you want to use firewire, but not use the mini 'ilink' connector (which can be unreliable for audio w/o judiciously turning off resources-Sony doesn't use a great FW chipset)-A possible solution (Full description):

"StarTech 2 Port ExpressCard Laptop 1394a Firewire Adapter Card (EC13942)"

Amazingly enough it does. I simply take the laptop's headphone output and feed it directly to our PA mixer. On a number of iccasions we've played on bigger stages and the output has gone through DI boxes to the main desk. Every sound engineer thinks it's a dream!

I use two keyboards, but they're not dedicated controllers. I also plug in my guitar into the microphone input to process it through NI Guitar Rig. Absolutely no problems at all. Our guitarist looks at his Marshall stack with some disdain!

For live stuff I use my Lenovo T420 laptop, Korg R3 (only occasionally use it for sounds - mainly vocoder stuff), NI Rig Kontrol for sound IO, and Cantabile as a VST host. I've got 2 keyboard controllers (R3 and a and an MPKmini) and a electric guitar going through there, and using NI Komplete mainly for VST instruments.

No glitches, no problems, nothing. I only trialled it out thinking it would do until I got some "proper" kit - but I'm going to stick with it because it works great. The only problem I've had is when I didn't notice the laptop power wasn't plugged in, and it died... Hmmmm....

Dafad.

My own experience with Cantabile is that I would like to like them, would like to buy product, but there are things like the reported stuck notes, various bugs and so on that they just never ever deal with and fix for years now. If TopTen Software wants my money, they need to get their act together and be a responsible company.

But there's more! You see, the original trial version of Cantabile 1.0 is very simple, works rather well, even though it looks primitive by today's standards. You get a good idea of the possibilities of the paid versions meanwhile. Yet by the release of Cantabile 2.0, the so-called "Lite" free version, they had removed all recording abilities. Rarely do you see a company remove features in newer editions, even free ones, but there you have it. I can only guess that the free versions worked well enough to meet users' needs that they weren't selling enough of the top-dollar editions to suit TopTen.

I started with Cantabile 2.0 Lite, but as soon as I discovered the lack of recording abilities (which renders that edition almost useless), I went on the Net and found the earlier 1.0 on some other website and installed it. Problem solved, and I just have to be careful not to enable "search for updates automatically," because TopTen will install the non-recording version over it. I don't like companies that do sneaky stuff like that.

I wish I knew how to upload Cantabile 1.0 right here for others to try. I'm new here. That version was always free, but they won't offer it anymore. Also, I note that some of the text included with their software sounds like it was written by someone who has English as a second language. Are they some Taiwanese company or something?

Anyhow, I still use both editions now and then, mainly for quick testing of new VST and VSTi's without having to use my full DAW setups. They work great for this and recording (1.0) a measure or two of drums or a melody when I get a quick moment of creativity and wish to save it.

Please know that I don't believe in using someone's paid software for free, nor will I abuse a trial period. I only used REAPER for about a month before I paid for it. Same story with my Podium, although the free edition can technically be used forever in their case. I know guys on these forums who have been using REAPER for free for months and months with no intention of ever paying. I have absolutely no respect for that. Trial means trial, even if Cockos is kind enough not to shut you down after the 30 days. There's nothing funny about abusing a company's good faith. But the problem with Cantabile was, they played underhanded, too, with their sneaky switcheroo. They never said a word about it, either -- just snatched the recording abilities away. Honesty works both ways in my book, people.

Forgot to include -- regarding the original topic, I would indeed use Cantabile live if not for the issues I and others have stated. I know what the software is capable of, and it would pretty well match my needs, as I have moved to including a laptop on stage these days.

I'd suggest instead Ableton Live 8 to anyone interested in this type of use. My oldest son has been using it for about 3 years now in precisely this role with excellent results. Live allows for all sorts of on-the-fly changes when live that far exceeds the other DAWs available currently.

I've been using Cantabile Performer exclusively on stage for about 6 months. I bought a Korg PS-60 to use as a controller - clean and easy for VSTi tweaking, and has a respectible soundset in case I ever needed to bail on the laptop. I own several others, but this fit the bill best despite it's cheesy appearance.

I'm a weekend warrior of sorts - I play in 3 bands, so I'm gigging at least once just about every weekend. After a bit of time learning what works & what doesn't, I'm completely confident with the Cantabile rig. FWIW...

- Off-the-shelf ASUS laptop (i3, 4g ram, 250g HD, Win7, lightly optimised for audio)
- Old Steinberg MI4 interface
- Cheapie nanopad2 velcro'd to the top of the controller I use for Leslie, audio triggers, and set list switching
- FCB1010 foot controller for volume, Clav wah, FX on/off, etc..
- Carefully selected VST's that play nice with Cantabile (including reverb, wah, etc)
- Cheapie Behringer hot-spot style monitor for gigs I don't need the amp for.
- A case (built myself) that serves as a laptop stand, power source, interface rack, cable storage, monitor stand, I/O jacks. I covered it with vinyl to look like an old Gibson amp from the 50's. If I don't need my amp at a gig, I only need 1 trip from the car.

I've only had to yank the laptop and plug-in direct once on stage, and it was because I did some tweaking the night before and hadn't tested it thoroughly. Honestly, I have no complaints at all, and I don't see myself going back to hardware ever for gigs.

Hi Sean,
thanks a lot for your report. Allow me to digest what I've noticed

Trust in pc solutions:
Seems to be still lower than in HW. I can't remember having read from someone having a PC solution to back up it's HW keyboard stuff...