Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
(Warning: below is a lengthy description of my attempt to design a nice
laptop setup for my playing. It's what you Americans seem to refer to as
"anal", and I still hope somebody would explain that metaphor to me.
There's
also kind of a question to folks interested in or versed in audio/MIDI
interfaces at the end ("ad (1)"). If you're not interested in this kind of
stuff and/or hate laptops, please delete).
So, I've also decided to go laptop. While I did think about the fact that
laptop-based apps can do some cool stuff, I simply didn't think I needed
it.
The reason for me was entirely different: when playing looping-related
stuff, my gear setup usually consists of three synths, a drum machine, an
8HU angled rack filled to the brim with stuff and lots of things on the
floor (VBass, DL4, FCB1010 and various expression pedals and footswitches)
-
ah, and something like a guitar and a bass guitar.
It's nice to play with this setup at home, and I've become relatively
fluent
with it, although I can perhaps use 10% of the power this setup gives me.
It's also possible to take it to a gig in, say, Northern Italy, where I
drive by car. Or Switzerland. Or something like that. Taking the setup to
places where going by car is a problem like, say, the USA or Poland, this
is
not so good.
So my plan was this: Limit my setup to a laptop plus audio/midi interface
plus specific controllers (floorboard, faderbox), and design it in a way I
can work with any keyboard and/or guitar/bass anyone is kind enough to
borrow me.
First thing: the hardware. along with my Toshiba laptop (PentiumM 2GHz, 1GB
RAM), these would be the Behringer BCR2000 and FCB1010, and an interface. I
started prototyping with my Terratec Phase26 (simply because it's already
connected to the laptop), but knew this wouldn't work for the final design:
no real mic inputs, and with that no phantom power. I don't like the RCA
connectors. Only 1 MIDI port would've been just sufficient (as I already
had
another MIDI in and two outs at my disposal from the BCR2000).
Digging through my gear, I decided upon the combo of RME Cardbus
Interface/RME Digiface/Behringer ADA8000. About the Behringer: it's an
8-channel in/out to ADAT box, and for that (and for the fame that Behringer
has) it's really outstanding. I have had one of those for years in my live
recording setup, and if you can live with the stupid fact that the XLR
input
connectors only work for microphone levels (so if you're connecting
anything
in the "line" range, you've got to use the (balanced) 1/4'' jacks), it's a
fine and reliable box. There's not much to say about the RME stuff from a
quality standpoint - their stuff has a top reputation, also with regard to
driver stability and performance. The Digiface itself offers three pairs of
ADAT connectors, a S/PDIF coaxial pair, two pairs of MIDI in/out and - very
important - a headphone jack. It also runs a mixer software on its internal
DSP, allowing for some mixing and routing - sufficient to say it does
everything I need at this point. By its clever routing matrix and the
abundance of ADAT connectors, it would also allow me to connect something
like one of my retired VR880 harddisc recorders to do multitrack recordings
of performances. And eight ins and outs in this setup should be enough for
any solo performer.
What I had to add was a way to connect the guitar or bass - and for this, I
use Behringer's small DI20 active DI. It can be connected to one of the mic
ins and fed by phantom power and also has a great reputation.
After some extensive thinking about which software platform to use, I
decided on Ableton Live. First of all because I had already used it in a
live performance context so had some experiences what worked here - and
what
did not. Designing the basic layout of the setup and then choosing plugins
that would not completely throw down the system performance-wise did also
require some thinking and also trial-and-error - and I quickly found that
my
requriements coming from my hardware setup (see above) were somewhat hard
to
fulfill. But the final layout looks some like this:
1 guitar/bass ( Amplitube and dfx Scrubby)
2 vocals (EQ Four, Compressor I, Memory, MadShifta, Scrubby)
3 Submix/recording 1 (EQ Three, Compressor 1, MadShifta, Scrubby,
SupaTrigga)
4 Submix/recording 2 (EQ Three, Compressor 1, MadShifta, Scrubby,
SupaTrigga)
5 Drumsampler [t.b.d. - perhaps Kontakt] (EQ Three, Compressor 1,
MadShifta, Scrubby, SupaTrigga)
6 Synth [t.b.d. - perhaps Pro52] (Pitch, Compressor 1, Scrubby)
7 Synth [PPG Wave] (Pitch, Compressor 1, Scrubby)
8 Organ [OrganTrio] (Pitch)
9 Piano [mda ePiano] (Pitch)
10 Tron [tapeworm] (Pitch, Scrubby)
11 Weirdo [Sun Ra] (Geometer)
12 Loop2 [Out2 of Mobius] (Eq Three, Compressor 1, MadShifta, Scrubby,
SupaTrigga)
13 R Loop [Mobius] (Eq Three, Compressor 1, MadShifta, SupaTrigga)
14 R Delay [tbd]
15 R Weird FX [tbd]
16 R Reverb [Reverb]
17 Mains (EQ Four, Magneto)
Tracks marked with "R" are return tracks.
So here's how this works: all plugins are turned off by default. I guess
having all of them going at once would give me a system load of perhaps
300%... So it's about keeping track what's on and what's not on. About
everything Live allows me to is controlled by either my BCR2000 or the
FCB1010. This is not the case for everything I'd like to control. Hey
Ableton, why can't I control the Route to and Route from with my faderbox?
And why can't I control the aux pre/post selection? And while were at it:
WHY IS THERE ONLY ONE GLOBAL PRE/POST SWITCH PER AUX? Did you ever look at
a
real mixer in your life?
What I have yet to decide on are details of how the operation of this
thingie is shared between the FCB1010 and the BCR2000. First ideas: control
of typical "mixer" or "front panel" functions is done with the BCR2000
(like
the mixer or some dials on plugins), anything having to do with "transport"
is done by the FCB1010 - as is the control of the Mobius. Now there's an
interesting question: the "record arm" switches - something for the floor
or
for the table? These are some things I've yet to work out. And I still want
to know why this stupid java-based editor for the BCR2000 allows me to
transfer patches from the device to my computer, and edit them, but won't
send them back!
Now to working with this thing: it's real great fun! As I mentioned in
another post, I've taken to edit patterns realtime (so, in addition to
realtime looping, we get realtime pattern editing!) One thing I recently
"invented" is recording a noise-based or atonal, non organized,
quasistatistical source (analog-synth lovers call these "noodles"), record
it into a Live clip and then put an envelope onto it to control the pitch
over a 12-bar length and play the blues with this noise. Then program a
pretty normal drum groove and activate both Scrubby and SupaTrigga on the
corresponding track. And then use this madness as a background for a nice
cozy guitar melody ;).
There's still lots of unsolved questions and open points - some of them in
short form:
* actually implementing the interface for the FCB1010
* implementing most of the interface for the BCR2000 (so far, only
the mixer functions have been done)
* get my lazy ass down and do hook up the RME/Behringer audio/MIDI
interface solution to replace the Terratec thingie
* reduce the number of plugins (very important!)
* reduce the number of tracks
* check out wheter an even more compact interface hardware would be
possible (1)
* develop fallback strategies (2)
* try wheter I can control one of the synths (Sun Ra?) effectively
with my PS5 data glove
ad (1): currently, it's two boxes: the RME Digiface and the Behringer
ADA8000, making a total of 1.5 rack spaces. On the other hand, I need a
minimum of two ins and four outs, headphone out, micpres and phantom power
and at least one MIDI pair. On the bright side, I recently discovered that
my laptop does in fact have a firewire interface, so this simplifies the
choice a little bit ;). But perhaps there is a better and more compact
solution. Anyone got an opinion on the ESI QuataFire 610, on the Marian
Ucon
CX or on the Hercules FW 16/12?
ad (2): I still take into consideration that my sturdy laptop setup might
fail at one point during a performance - either short-time-temporarily or
for longer (meaning: until I get home after the gig ;). In this case, I'd
like some minimum fallback strategy. The Digiface allows to retain the
configuration of its internal mixer even if the unit is disconnected from
the computer. So one idea would be to send my analogue input signals to two
outputs of the ADA8000 leading to a, say, Boss DD20, which in turn return
via two inputs. Normally I'd turn off the Boss (so no signal from it hits
the mains), but if the computer fails, I could still do simple schticks
with
guitar, voice and the DD20...
Thanks for listening - I keep you posted as I progress further ;-)
Rainer