how much production is too much... for playing live

[z.electric]

Hello all,

just a request for a couple of pointers hopefully..

My band [http://www.zelectricband.com] has recently made the transition from digital to live drumming. It's been a boon for me personally because I used to programme the drums and I'm not drummer.... nor a very good drum programmer. It also means that the synth outputs are now less clogged with percussion.

Whet I'm now left with is synths (basses included) whilst the rest of you band (guitar, sax, trumpet, vocals, drums) are all live. We still retain our dance sound, a large part of which is determined by genre (triphop/ dnb) and the use of the DAW/ synths when playing.

My battle with playing live is this: How much time to spend refining the VASTs/synths when 1) I cannot really tell how they're going to sound in any venue because I'm on-stage and 2) When I'm mixing / sculpting the synths/VSTs, I don't have the benefit of the other instruments playing with me al the time.

Is anyone else playing with multiple synths/ fx etc in a band and has a basic approach on where they like to get the sound to, without wasting aeons of time on sculpting something un-necessarily?

Is it best to just mix during rehearsals? Or do you take the sounds away and "refine" them on your own?