Who uses Cantabile live (and no synth hardware)

[pinkcanaru]

I would avoid mem cleaner plugins like the plague. If there are memory leaks then that is invariably down to a bad plugin and you should avoid that first.

I think it is possible to guarantee performance. If you can make it work once and you change nothing, then it should work again and again and again.
TiUser has a certain take on this which I'm a little more relaxed about.
That is, if you can have a computer which is up to the task you are demanding of it, and you have a safety margin, you will not fail.
I do use my Thinkpad live on some fairly hefty gigs in front of audiences - and with artists who simply would not be interested if I had a CPU meltdown on stage,
They just want it to work.... and it does.
But it was a learning process, and each person has to go through it. No two systems are the same unless you run the identical plugins on the identical computer setup.

[Tony Ostinato]

my stage laptop has its wireless turned off in bios and i dont have any firewall etc running.

i update it with my home net laptop.

[TiUser]

TiUser has a certain take on this which I'm a little more relaxed about.

I just point on the fact that you can't guarantee proper resource management in windows concerning cpu and audio processing. That's nothing I can not look at as relaxed as you do... but it does not change the fundamentals... if you play too many notes you still can overload and get crackles. VST's seem also not to be designed to manage any real resource aspect, VST's look at hw as an unlimited resource...

Only way is to leave enough headroom - and that's like you say a matter of experience and experiment...

A proper system IMHO would have a design that can control resources and cut voices proper before the cpu resources are overloaded and result in audio crackles and pops...

[pinkcanaru]

VST's look at hw as an unlimited resource...

YES - and there is another factor very closely related. WE look at the systems as unlimited. There's always the temptation to put in some more plugins and use a little more this and that ... because we can.

Using computers live is a discipline. Every single system out there - even the most highly optimized, can be brought to its knees if the user pushes hard enough. No exceptions. I guess this is a subject that will come up again and again on a forum devoted to live use of audio plugins - everyone wants to know if it can be done reliably.

The answer is yes. Just like driving. Know what you're doing or there's gonna be a crash.

[TiUser]

That's another factor which is absolutely true.

However, if you don't know how much horsepower you have at hand you can't adapt your driving style to this without leaving a lot of headroom...

In Win you never know which "important" processes the system decides to start next... Even updates (OS, graphics drivers,..) can change the game - there is simply no binding contracht by Win to provide any amount of cpu in time. I welcome any expert programmer who shows me different - but 'til then I stick with my experences and analysis.

I think I'm quite right in demanding better system behavior to get us more time to focus on what all this is finally about - making music... I know I am a very inconvenient guy here - but cool down - if we don't demand something better there is no chance that anything will ever change. It's also important to make others sensitive to all this, first to avoid more frustration than necessary and second to increase the base of users demanding better systems. Just a few nerds pointing on issues most do not realize or understands will not help either...

There are IMHO also too many people demaniding more and more fancy features and forgetting the basic functionallity that isn't perfectioned at all yet...

It may all sound picky, but I just want to shake up people. As said, I can look at all relaxed too. Running a B4 on a modern PC should not be any practical issue at all.

[Tony Ostinato]

indeed, everything i use onstage has been tested a lot at home. when i change things drastically in any way ill often do a "gig simulation" playing along with the recording of the most recent gig.

i have certain setups for songs that i know i can test with because they're as loaded as they can be, adding another voice or instrument would bring on the crackling and dropouts.

on a stock keyboard or midi module setup someone else wouldve done all this in the design stage and set a final limit on resources.

and theres always stuff im trying out at home that i know is years away from going onstage because its too power hungry or unstable.

i would think that keyboard players face an additional danger that i dont as much. with keyboards you have the ability to activate all the notes at once right in front of you, literally at your fingertips.

im one note at a time unless i program in harmonies, and if ive programed them in ive also tested them a lot.

on keyboard you might get excited during a gig and say your playing b4 you might get tempted to do that both hands flat on the keyboard and sliding/smearing up and down the whole range thing and hey you might even hit the sustain pedal at the same time being so excited, sending polyphony to the max.

if you never got that excited during rehearsal there might be a surprise in store at that point.

so a keyboardist would probably want to address that and leave the needed headroom even tho its gonna look like a lot of unused power most of the time.

i dont count notes when i program this stuff but id be surprised if i ever have more than 50 notes at once.

[TiUser]

A lot of good points!

...on a stock keyboard or midi module setup someone else wouldve done all this in the design stage and set a final limit on resources.

Well my point here is that you can't reliably limit pc resources. The point is less who is setting it. Hosts simply don't provide polyphony control and even if, windows does not guarantee any amount of cpu per note. That's why we struggle that much with PC based systems.

Imagine what a Korg Kronos pulls out of a shitty cpu... Imagine if this would run on HW we usually think a PC based music system should have... we would see a monster in terms of polyphony and versatility...

[pinkcanaru]

Many plugins offer limiting and Pizmidi even has a plugin which will govern plugins which don't offer polyphony limits. But I have never had to make a decision about polyphony on my current system for any other reason than a creative one.
If one is running a less than stellar laptop live and expecting stellar performance then one is going to be constantly jumping through hoops.

Things have definitely shifted since the introduction of the i5 and i7 CPUs.
You can do a lot more - reliably.
How do you determine what's reliable? Test it. Even though some plugins are responsible for spiking, as long as the spikes are within the capability of the system, it's not a problem. You only have to look at what Tony is achieving to understand that. In all fairness though, Tony is carefully managing polyphony on a monophonic instrument which he has brilliantly configured to achieve musical polyphonic output. It's a very creative and visionary use of software which allows a monophonic instrument like the WX5 to emulate a form of preset polyphony.

A conventional keyboard player will probably be capable of inducing potential overload far more easily.

Here's my live Cantabile Rig on a Lenovo Thinkpad with an i5 processor and 8 gig of ram.

Guitar Racks

Rack 1 Tuner:
Melda Tuner

Rack 2 PreAmp FX:
Midi monitor
TS-999 Tubescreamer
Rocket Compressor
Floorfish Gate
Melda Bandpass Filter
Coyote Wah
AD RingMod
Stolon Pitch Shifter
Voxengo Overtone EQ
BlueCat Gain (expression pedal)
AutoGate
Ggate

Rack 3 Amps Left
Anvil
LeCto
LeGion
LeXtac
Le456
HyBrit
Crowe 8505
Ignite PTEq-1a
Autogate

Rack 3 Amps Right
A copy of Rack 3.

Rack 4 Recabinet 1
Rack 5 Recabinet 2
Rack 6 Stolon Pitch Shifter
Rack 7 Leslie Effect
Rack 8 Blue Cat Gain
Rack 9 Stereo Delay
Rack 10 GLoop
Rack 11 Elottronix Looper
Rack 12 2c Breeze Reverb
Rack 13 LFX-1310 MutliFX
Rack 14 Sonalkiss Stereo Fader

Keyboard Racks


Rack 15 VB3 Organ
Rack 16 Synth 1 A
Rack 17 Synth 1 B
Rack 18 Synth 1 C
Rack 19 Synth 1 D
Rack 20 Omnisphere A
Rack 21 Omnisphere B
Rack 22 Halion 4 A (Memory Locked)
Rack 23 Halion 4 B
Rack 24 Mr Tramp Mk 2
Rack 25 Mr Ray Mk 1
Rack 26 Wallander WIVI
Rack 27
PizMidi LFO
Waldorf Wave 2.2 plus a lot of Pizmidi.
Rack 28 Analog Sequencer

The Waldorf Wave rack is easier to show because it uses a lot of PizMidi LFOs to obtain fx that could not be achieved from the Waldorf plugin alone:


Now that is a fair amount of plugins and my entire guitar and keyboard rig is right there, inside Cantabile on a laptop. It is simply the most powerful, versatile, best sounding, rig I have ever had. And it's the ONLY rig I ever had which was capable of handling guitar and keyboards and I'd be interested to know what it would take as a hardware equivalent to get close to it.
This rig runs safely at a sample buffer of 128.
The trick is in knowing how to manage your resources.
This rig is basically an AxeFX in a laptop coupled with a remarkable clutch of synths, modelers and samplers.
The only time I'm thinking about resources is when I'm setting up the sub-sessions. By the time I'm playing for real... that stuff ain't on my radar anymore.
Using a hybrid Seagate Momentus drive, the entire thing loads in 20 secs, which includes a hefty 16 velocity layer piano.

[TiUser]

Impressive report...

I agree that latest gen i5 and i7 are about 2-3 times more powerful than comparable stuff before. SSDs also rises the bar.

Still I stick with my technical judgement, there is (in musical output terms) on Windows no resource control. The only practical approach is indeed yours, test and get enough cpu headroom.

Again, I don't say this does not work, but you need a lot of patience and experience - and you are never 100% on the save side (excluding technical issues - just looking at the systems properties)

[pinkcanaru]

I think that once you experience, first hand, what the latest generation of CPUs and drives can do you will come to the same conclusion that I have; that any shortcomings are masked to the point of being irrelevant and that live performance of real complexity in real situations is as viable and safe with a laptop as it is with any piece of equipment.
Furthermore, for the price of the synth hardware you would need to buy, you can easily buy a great laptop and have a LOT of change and have a complete backup.
I respect completely your technical overview of how computers prioritize. It's just that on a forum dedicated to Cantabile, and on a thread asking specifically about real world use, I wouldn't want the conclusion to be 'it's way too risky'.
It's only risky on computers which are not up to the task and which have not had some basic tweaks performed.

[TiUser]

As said in prior posts I totally agree in terms of your point of view and approach.

My statements about my experiences with windows touch the principles - not that things can not work if you have plenty of system resurces. There is no real opinion behind this, just a critical analysis.

What I am finally about is that with windows you waste cpu you have paid for when using it with audio because practically you need to make sure to have enough headroom. I there were no practical issues here and there I would agree much more to your practical point of view.

In addition I think it should not be necessary to always get the latest and top of the line HW. If you don't have the budget for this you would welcome that the cpu power you already have would be better used. Maybe it's unmodern to reflect on this - in times where people buy a new cellphone every 18 month at avertage - just to have the latest and greatest.

The so called "HW" is indeed another story. As I said it's a tradeoff and if I'm honest nor HW neither SW is finally too great... While people are proud of an 20 year old guitar, are they the same about their 20 year old keyboards?

Well I like computing a lot too but I have changed my mind over the years when it comes to expenses and I use mainstream gear and avoid top of the line stuff - as it will be "entry level" some years later. For non commercial use paying the premium isn't really worth IMHO.

[pinkcanaru]

Yep, I completely understand that it makes no sense to be chasing the techno envy if it's not relevant to your needs. You can never catch up unless there are unlimited resources. The cellphone analogy, however.... I'm not so sure that analogy holds

Cellphones are, for most people, modern fashion accouterments in which the vast majority of bells and whistles will never be used. A laptop for reliable live use? That is, for the live performer, not a fashion choice.

It's precisely because the technology has advanced and the prices have come DOWN that such remarkable results are achievable by an ever widening group of users.
Some of the old canards regarding live use of computers simply have to be reevaluated.

This thread started in Feb of 2011. Not so long ago - but, in light of all the discussion that has happened since then, are you still comfortable with the following statement from May 2012:

"One thing is "latency". This is rarely discussed with (todays) dedicated music HW but a usual topic in a windows software based setups. If you configure small audio buffers - which is welcome for live playing - you can easily outperform any windows based pc."

(my bold)

The fact is, on a well specified system, problematic latency is a thing of the past. So the technology, and keeping up with it, cannot be ignored if playing live is the mission to be accomplished.

[Tony Ostinato]

hardware has quite large latency, somehow the myth it has none has prevailed.

things like pianos and trumpets have latency as well, i could lower the buffer of my setup to get less latency but then i can't double and triple tongue without tripping up. only when i match the computer latency to that of a trumpet can i do all the stuff i like to do.

but all that discarded as nonsense if you feel you must theres still television, and if you think computers arent being used onstage by pro musicians in big name acts your television must not be working, cause i see them nightly now.

and ive mentioned this before but computers improve at quite a fast pace, whereas all other musical instruments have pretty much plateaued.


i like to refer to my setup as the most complex rig ever brought onstage, 10 keyboards with 10 midi harmonizers and countless midi fx and audio fx. id need a full crew to deal with it all if it werent contained in my laptop.

i like to look at everything as if it all was invented on the same day. a lot of crap has been grandfathered into the music biz that if it were created today wouldnt get past the design stage. floor monitors for instance, people think feedback only occurs when they hear it self oscillate but its happening all the time, degrading your sound. nowadays people would catch that upon introduction and theyd never sell.

[TiUser]

I think you get me wrong.

What I am about is PC solutions lack resource control for audio. It's not about modern PC's can handle a lot before they run out of juice... My criticism is about all the software design behind, not what you can do when you leave headroom and use strong machines. If you wish it's tech geeks talk. But if you watch this forum you may also see that many people have difficulties creating a stable system on a not so modern pc with not so optimized windows underneath.

It's true that natural instruments may have latency. My best example I can think of is the pipe organ. There are of course natural instruments that are hard to recreate on keyboard style instruments at all - because you can't play a keyboard like a guitar, a brass instrument,... Industry struggles for ages with this problem to even provide - as I call it - somehow convincing yet keyboard playable typical sound colors of natural instruments.

Articulation emulation of natural instruments is quite "young" compared to traditional keyboard synthesizers. It's quite clear that sampling isn't the end of this story. It's also about virtual modelling instruments and behaviour/articulation modelling when played via a keyboard.

I accept the practical approach to those who make their living from music or simple work on stage. But the same people wouldn't accept todays technology shortcomings when they would have a system with the properties I demand.

Just telling things are great does not spin the wheel. Pointing to shortcomings, discussing and making proposals for the different does. In that sense I finish with that I like the discussion here a lot.

[pinkcanaru]

Ha ha. I like it too.

So, are you comfortable with your statement from a year ago?
I guess I drew my conclusions about your attitude to live use of a laptop from your assertion that ANY PC can't run well at low latency.
I don't think that was exactly a glowing endorsement.

I think it's safe to say that anyone who is serious about using computers live is going to be serious about the hardware. That's what this topic is really about. The OP wants to know... who is doing it? What are the caveats? What are the success stories based on? Are serious rigs being handled or are you playing one free VSTi piano?

If we are not going to 'spin our wheels' and reach some kind of conclusion for prospective users, would it be fair to say, "Yes, of course you can run a brilliant low latency system on a current i5/i7 laptop and you can make it stellar with SSD and as much ram as you can get in." ???