OT: Bruce. Patch Changing VSTis for live gigs...

[Chadwick]

Sorry guys, but I have to ask.

Bruce, I\'m probably going to be playing live again shortly (first time in 15 years - yay!), and I intend to do it with a small keyboard and laptop running VSTis. This will end up being the smallest, most controllable - but best sounding - setup I\'ve ever had live images/icons/smile.gif Sometime in the last year or so I\'m sure you\'ve mentioned a piece software you use live which is the brain of your setup. Unfortunately, searching the Bruce files is no mean feat. So I\'m taking the lazy way out, sorry.

I want be able to:

1. Combine and balance a few VSTis split or layered across the keyboard into a single \'patch\'

2. Be able to quickly reorder these patches (for different set lists) in a master list which I can step through during the gig.

Thanks mate
Rick

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Hi Rick,

There\'s an interesting application called Forte that does this for DXi, and most VSTi instruments are also distributed with DXi versions. The company\'s name is Brainspawn. You\'re able to save the performance info and step through.

There\'s the Steinberg V-Stack thing too, although I don\'t know how much performance structure exists.

This is an area no one has fully explored, but Forte is probably the most performance-oriented host currently available.

Bruce

[Z6]

You might try Chainer from xlutop.com. I\'m not sure if it\'ll let you do everything you want but the demo allows you complete functionality except saving setups, so at least you can really get to try it.

Not sure about split patches, but you might be able to hack something around its features - it allows automation (in up to 100 plugins per instance, and you can even insert another instance of Chainer inside Chainer; so it\'s not limited), and it claims to let you create mutlisamples in wav format (haven\'t tried that).

[Chadwick]

Is this forum cool or what images/icons/smile.gif

Thanks guys, I\'ll have a look at both.

Cheers
Rick

[ellle]

http://www.kvr-vst.com/review.php?action=show&id=261 (\"http://www.kvr-vst.com/review.php?action=show&id=261\") for some \"chainer reviews\"

[Chadwick]

Thanks Ellie - seems like a lot of happy puppies out there.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

I\'ve tried Chainer, frankly, unless they\'ve done a lot of work, it\'s not much of a performance app. Forte has better (but not perfect) routing.

The problem with all these apps is they don\'t have great signal routing, i.e., good insert/send/buss architecture. So, you end up running lots more instances of plugins than you really need because you can\'t create a true performance routing.

If you really enjoy putting things together, I\'d recommend at least looking at Reaktor as a performance environment. I\'ve been using it since the Generator days, and the last two versions have been plenty efficient and stable for live performance, and in Reaktor, you can completely tailor the UI to your performance needs. A lot of that depends upon your genre, too, but Reaktor covers a lot of ground. For instance, I have one Reaktor ensemble that\'s my all-purpose weird jam-out rig, with a \"Mouse Theremin,\" a couple of nice synths, a vocoder, and some live effects for horns.

[Franky]

Hi all,

For my live gigs I use Xlutop Chainer, it\'s a godsend for me.
I use alot of VSTIs and effects especially Halion 2 and Native Instruments B4 and some synth VSTIs like Pro53 and Albino. Using Halion as a VSTI permits me to insert any Vst effect in chainer which is great. I wish they had a master audio routing or some sends for effects to like put a reverb on everything but besides that I truely love it.

One great feature is that it saves all your data in one file so for every different gig you just load up the preset and it loads all your VSTI\'s samples effects etc, isn\'t that great or what. I suppose you could also make setups for each song in one file and load every file for each song, personally I prefer loading all my Samples and VSTIs and control the preset changing and keyboard splitting etc etc from within my Kurzweil PC88. images/icons/smile.gif

One other nice features is you can load many instances of Chainer so if you need more than the 10 VSTI slots offered, you simply open a other instance of chainer and keep adding as many as needed.

All works great for me anyway.


Kindly,
Franky
Vintaudio

[Mattias Henningson]

Bruce - I\'m sure there are some cool routing features coming in Forte sooner or later. images/icons/wink.gif

Rick - I\'d just like to put another vote on Forte. Rock stable app that works great as is. There are always features you would like to see in any app, but so far I haven\'t found another app with a feature set dedicated to live performances.

/Mattias