Using VSTs live

[codevyper]

For the last year and a half I have run a 50/50 rig. I have my Motif ES and an M-Audio Axiom. When I started out I ran Ableton 8 as my VST host, but it didn't suite me for what I needed, then I found Cantabile. I'm running the Arturia V-Collection, Synapse Dune and the Ni B4 and Kontakt sampler for my customized horn patch built from sounds off my old Roland XP-50 (can't beat those pop synth horns from Roland!). I was running the whole thing on a Dell Latitude D630 in Win7 32bit with 4GB of ram and an Edirol FA-66. It was solid!

I work on computers for my day job though so I knew I would have to use the laptop purely for music, so I disabled everything in the bios and got as many unnecessary services as possible disabled in windows. It worked great for me as a test bed to see if it was ready for prime time. I felt it was, so I recently went all in and bought a MacBook Pro. Unfortunately Cantabile won't run natively in OS X so I'm using MainStage and Logic. It has some cool features but pales in comparison to Cantabile IMO. Still, I'm in the game with VSTs for good now. Maybe in the next few years I'll venture into running all VST and no hardware but not ready to take that plunge just yet.