It's great! Much less latency, and more accurate MIDI timing. Playing VSTi's in Live feel great. In the past I would record a MIDI track and then play it back and say - wow, was my timing that off? On the Mac, I record it in, and on the playback the track sounds great. It's responsive and musical.
Found a great Organ plugin, the VB3. It has a really nice Hammond sound, and a nice Leslie. Much more reasonable than the B4 by NI.
More to come...
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
When the Laptop Fails...
I have been using a Dell Inspiron 6000 for almost two years leading worship and if you asked me before last week I would say that it has worked great....
However, this past Sunday I was playing an instrumental duet during communion with the sax player when the laptop glitched out. The CPU usage indicator went up high, the meters froze and the sound coming out was all distorted and nasty. I quick turned around to the guitar player and said "Take over, key of C" and thankfully the team stepped in. It was too bad, b/c it was really beautiful up to that point.
It's possible that the hard drive is showing early signs of failure, as the laptop is now three years old. However, up till this point it has worked great. I checked thru the Ableton log files and didn't find anything out of the ordinary.
Anyway, my laptop IS my instrument; and I want something that I can count on. After this wierd experience, I don't feel like I can count on it. When I started using the laptop I used a Korg Synth as a MIDI control and also patched the audio output from the Korg into a small mixer along with the laptop audio so if there was any problem I could mute the laptop and switch to playing the Korg. However, after a few months that was never needed, so lately I've just gone straight to a direct box from the audio interface. After the glitch, I repatched the Korg into the DI and picked up on the next song.
So it's time to get a new "instrument." I refuse to buy something with Vista b/c of the huge resource drain it puts on a system. So if I was to buy a new PC I would need to pay extra to "downgrade" to XP. I borrowed a new Macbook, put the Ableton demo version on it, and it works so smoothly. I was impressed that when I plugged my audio interface in, it was instantly recognized and worked w/o needing to install any drivers. And I could crank the latency way down with no audio artifacts. Granted, it's not fair comparing a 3 year old Pentium M with a new Core 2 Duo, but the whole experience was sweet.
Getting a solidly built laptop is important, as it will always be moved from home to church, and when I compared the better built PC's they were not much less expensive that a MacBook. And when I found a refurbished MacBook for $200 off at the Apple Store, I went for it. Ableton and most of my NI plug-ins are cross platform so they should work well. I need to find a good organ for the Mac - I've been using the AZR3 free one, and that only runs on PC. Can't spring for the B4 now.
Well the MacBook will arrive next week, and I'm looking forward to see how it works. I'm getting ready to move stuff over and rebuild my Live Set so it will work w/o some of the PC plug-ins that don't exist on the Mac. I think the built in Ableton instruments will have to suffice for now.
However, this past Sunday I was playing an instrumental duet during communion with the sax player when the laptop glitched out. The CPU usage indicator went up high, the meters froze and the sound coming out was all distorted and nasty. I quick turned around to the guitar player and said "Take over, key of C" and thankfully the team stepped in. It was too bad, b/c it was really beautiful up to that point.
It's possible that the hard drive is showing early signs of failure, as the laptop is now three years old. However, up till this point it has worked great. I checked thru the Ableton log files and didn't find anything out of the ordinary.
Anyway, my laptop IS my instrument; and I want something that I can count on. After this wierd experience, I don't feel like I can count on it. When I started using the laptop I used a Korg Synth as a MIDI control and also patched the audio output from the Korg into a small mixer along with the laptop audio so if there was any problem I could mute the laptop and switch to playing the Korg. However, after a few months that was never needed, so lately I've just gone straight to a direct box from the audio interface. After the glitch, I repatched the Korg into the DI and picked up on the next song.
So it's time to get a new "instrument." I refuse to buy something with Vista b/c of the huge resource drain it puts on a system. So if I was to buy a new PC I would need to pay extra to "downgrade" to XP. I borrowed a new Macbook, put the Ableton demo version on it, and it works so smoothly. I was impressed that when I plugged my audio interface in, it was instantly recognized and worked w/o needing to install any drivers. And I could crank the latency way down with no audio artifacts. Granted, it's not fair comparing a 3 year old Pentium M with a new Core 2 Duo, but the whole experience was sweet.
Getting a solidly built laptop is important, as it will always be moved from home to church, and when I compared the better built PC's they were not much less expensive that a MacBook. And when I found a refurbished MacBook for $200 off at the Apple Store, I went for it. Ableton and most of my NI plug-ins are cross platform so they should work well. I need to find a good organ for the Mac - I've been using the AZR3 free one, and that only runs on PC. Can't spring for the B4 now.
Well the MacBook will arrive next week, and I'm looking forward to see how it works. I'm getting ready to move stuff over and rebuild my Live Set so it will work w/o some of the PC plug-ins that don't exist on the Mac. I think the built in Ableton instruments will have to suffice for now.
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