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Looper's Delight
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At 02:37 PM 3/7/2005, Edwin Hurwitz wrote:
>I am coming back to this list after many years of absence. I am thinking
>about utilizing my laptop for this (Mac Powerbook 1.5 ghz 15") and was
>wondering how many folks on this list are using a mac and if so, what
>software they use.
Well, I'm coming in late to the party as usual (work's been killing me, so
I'm behind on listmail), but since I somewhat resemble this scenario I
should probably chime in....
In its simplest form, my new(est) setup has me utilizing one of the tiny
12" G4 Powerbooks to process and loop sound from my Chapman Stick. My
host
software is Ableton Live 4.1. Even beyond its core functionality, Ableton
Live is great as a software mixer and VST/AU host. I'm using an Edirol
FA-101 firewire soundcard -- which is 10-in, 10-out -- so I've been able
to
dispense with a mixer entirely by taking advantage of the extra feeds on
the Edirol and routing/mixing directly within Live.
Within Ableton, I'm using a couple instances of Augustus Loop for most of
my looping. I've been playing around with SooperLooper as well, but I'm
running into some flaky Jack issues at the moment and haven't been able to
take full advantage of it.
For effects, there are some excellent modules that already come with
Ableton Live (I really like the filtered delay and the bit-reducer, for
instance, and I believe Per has already mentioned Live's reverb). You can
quickly eat up a lot of your CPU by piling these suckers on, however, so
that fact prompted me to pick up a TC Electronics Powercore. That
solution
now allows me to offload my commonly used ambient effects -- like chorus,
delay, and reverb -- to the Powercore, and save my CPU cycles for more
esoteric plugs like Koen Tang's KTGranulator, Audio Damage's
Dischord/Deverb, or DestroyFX's Skidder.
I've got a couple of other outboard units integrated into the setup as
well. I wanted to get the noise gate and compressor plug-ins off my CPU,
so I've got the Stick run into an M-Audio DMP3 preamp to achieve proper
gain staging, then into one of the new ART TCS dual optical-VCA
compressors/expanders (or, rather, that's how things should look tomorrow
afternoon: the ART was on backorder and FedEx has it en route to me even
now). I thought I would be able to use the Powercore for this task, but
it
*does* add a tiny amount of latency, and given the fact that I frequently
use compressors in an effects send (rather than an insert) I was starting
to recreate some of the Repeater's "dry-mute" issues with inadvertent
flanging. This Powercore quirk is actually really easy to correct for in
a
situation where you're using pre-recorded material (such as mixdown or
mastering). However, this is "live" processing and not so easy to get
around it here.
Three other hardware units have made it into the setup: my Lexicon Vortex,
because it's a new purchase and it's kewl and I've been dying to use it; a
Yamaha Magicstomp, because it's a great little swiss-army-knife stompbox;
and finally a Model-C Sustainiac. The Sustainiac is primarily tied into
the laptop so that I can control which output from the Stick gets fed back
into it (remember, the Chapman Stick has two outputs -- a bass side and a
melody side), or I can feed back tones that have nothing to do with what
I'm actually playing (i.e. synth drones).
Back on the software side, I've got a lot of software synths, but I'm
trying to be conservative and have as much sound generated live. However,
if I were pressed to name a couple I can't live without, I'd definitely
say
Spectrasonics Atmosphere and Steinberg D'Cota. Also, since the Powercore
sounds so good, I'm playing with the idea of grabbing the software version
of the Access Virus too.
Hrm, probably more info than you wanted there. Par for the course, for
one
of my typical posts, but hopefully you can get something from it....
--m.
_____
"i want to reach my hand into the dark and *feel* what reaches back"
-recoil