Taking electronica on the road...

[NewOrleansElectronic]

Hey everyone...I'm a solo electronica artist who is intending to tour the U.S. with a guitar and a sampler or laptop. I'm trying to think of the best (efficient, economical, and highest possible quality) way to go about this.

I processed all of my song's channels at 16 bit sample rates. I've recently recorded at a studio where they were all converted to 24 bit. The vocals, guitar, accordion, and string tracks were recorded at 24 bit.

Would it be better to expand my laptop's memory to playback the stuff from my host program or buy a sampler and convert the channels to loops?

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[C00kie]

efficient & economical: forget the laptop; record a mix of your backing tracks to a minidisc, press play & jam along.

quality: use CD instead of minidisc. More than 16bits on playback is pearls for swines. Really, no one will ever notice!

more control: mix down essential parts you're not changing on the road at home, but still use the host.

Maybe convert back to 16bits, and see how it sounds. When in doubt, arrange a double-blind listening test. As I already said, the average audience wouldn't care less!

[NewOrleansElectronic]

efficient & economical: forget the laptop; record a mix of your backing tracks to a minidisc, press play & jam along.

quality: use CD instead of minidisc. More than 16bits on playback is pearls for swines. Really, no one will ever notice!

more control: mix down essential parts you're not changing on the road at home, but still use the host.

Maybe convert back to 16bits, and see how it sounds. When in doubt, arrange a double-blind listening test. As I already said, the average audience wouldn't care less!

Thank you so much.

That's great advice. I think I will mixdown a lot of my stuff so only one synth channel and the master channel can be manipulated with my MIDI controller.

I am probably going to bring my laptop after I expand the memory (it needs it) and bring an iPod as a backup.

Thanks again.