Jump to content
Please subscribe to MPN’s YouTube Channel!

Markay

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    3,500

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Markay

    Why no more songs with witty titles?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    As the only person on the road cruising in to work today I had Procol Harum's Broken Barricades turned up to 11 in the car. Now long time since I last listened to this album and looked down to check the name of the current song. It was Playmate of the Mouth.

     

    [video:youtube]

     

    Lead me to the thought that in my yoof from Frank Zappa on "We Are Only In It For The Money" there were a lot of witty, wry and play on words or phrases, Song and Album titles.

     

    So why, and when, did this stop?

    Your pet peeves in Christmas carols?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Well those of us in the southern hemisphere have grappled with the concept of a winter Xmas in the middle summer since Christianity arrived in this part of the world. One man's turkey is another man's prawns.

     

    I figure that any festival that celebrates peace and goodwill to everyone is a good thing , on the 25th of December or any other time. Whatever the lyrics I am cool with l

    them, even when they happen to be about snow and it is 40+ degrees in the shade.

    Low latency audio interface for playing vsti's live

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Tusker makes a good point about getting an audio interface. The benefits are it comes with an optimised audio driver, you shift audio processing off the laptop and most have master knob to alter volume on the fly. I use a 2nd Gen Focusrite. Around $120 when I got mine. Sure RME' are the Rolls Royce, but 5 or more times the expense for one way improvement of 2ms or so. You are searching for a 15 to 20ms improvement which, if audio is the issue here, any interface will fix.

    Low latency audio interface for playing vsti's live

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Lots of folk here have successfully used laptops live for many years with no noticeable latency. I started out on Windows and switched to OSX because Apple build and sell their own DAW - Logic, VI's called AU's in the Apple World, and a VST Host, MainStage. To make it all work Apple also provide their CoreMidi and CoreAudio drivers that are tested and work. An OS that is built and tested to work for music. Music is not a priority for MS.

     

    On Windows you to are using on OS on a wide range of hardware that can be bundled together in an infinite number of combinations. Some of these hardware combinations work brilliantly for music others don't - for no apparent reason.

     

    I ended up paying the Apple tax because I want a system that just works out of the box.

     

    My day job for the psst 30 years has existed because we manipulate MS OS's to do what is required for us to deliver our services. But once the sun goes down I prefer to play, not spend time debugging tech.

     

    I am sure others will chime in with the brand and specs of a laptop running Windows that works for them.

     

    But let me throw this out as a good starting point. Svengle "best Hackintosh laptops". What comes up will be those that have hardware nearly identical to that which Apple uses. Pick one of these, if it will run Mac OS with minimal changes you can be almost guaranteed it will also be good for music with Win10.

    Low latency audio interface for playing vsti's live

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

     

    Either way, would these numbers be considered normal?

    I just have a generic MIDI to USB cable going into the laptop. Is there a better way? Is there MIDI to USB-C? What interface can I use to improve this latency?

     

    This may give you some insight into the complexity of measuring and comparing latency numbers:

     

    DAW Bench

     

    Agreed but the finger to ear test is what matters. If we can't feel any latency it doesn't matter what it is. As I understand it 10ms is about the threshold for most people, higher for some. Vin's work is great great for ranking drivers and interfaces. Also what matters playing VI's is midi in > VI > DAC audio out latency, not audio in ADC > VI > DAC audio out which will always have higher latency.

     

    Low latency audio interface for playing vsti's live

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I did a couple more tests:

     

    Recorded into Zoom multitrack recorder:

     

    Direct audio from Roland sound module vs. SM58 on keystrike audio = Roland audio average 16 ms behind

    Direct audio from laptop vs SM58 on keystrike audio = Laptop audio average 30 ms behind

     

    This means on the Roland it's about 16 ms latency which is MIDI latency plus whatever additional processing time. ?

    Not sure why the difference between the laptop and the Roland was 14 ms in this test, when it was 6-7 ms in the other test. Different test method with different factors I guess?

     

    Either way, would these numbers be considered normal?

    I just have a generic MIDI to USB cable going into the laptop. Is there a better way? Is there MIDI to USB-C? What interface can I use to improve this latency?

     

    I would not consider that normal. 30 ms is high and definitely in the range that I think most would notice. The cables are not the issue, midi involves the transfer of a small number of bits which USB can handle just fine. Similarly virtually all audio interfaces are USB 2 and perform well with low latency. The issue lies with drivers, hardware, or settings on your machine. There are a number of good guides on how to configure a PC for best audio performance. . For example are you running max power mode?

     

    There is a good guide available on the Cantabile site see this link Glitch Free

    Low latency audio interface for playing vsti's live

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Easy way to test whether you are as sensistive to latency as you suggest is to play a hardware board, then move the speaker 6' further away. If you can notice the difference then maybe you are hyper sensitive and can feel latency of around 6ms. From Billy Joel down there are many artists successfully playing VST's live where midi travels along long snakes to off stage computers and then audio back to their onstage monitors. There is way more than 6ms latency in those rigs.

     

    From the feel you describe there has to be more than the reported 6 ms of latency. One way you can try and measure it is to set up an audio recorder, like a Zoom, put some thimbles on your finger and hit a key hard enough that the thimble makes an audible noise. Then open the recorded wav file in Audacity and see how many ms elapse between the the sound of the thimble and rise from the leading edge of the VST sound. Deduct 1ms for each foot that the speaker is from the recorder.

    Venice & Sydney

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Thanks for the thoughts.

     

    I am sitting outside breathing the smoke of a new fire on the fringe of Sydney as I write this. The fires in Turramurra, a northern Sydney suburb, threatened homes less than 6 kilometers from where Dazzjazz and I live. But we are both in heavily urban areas and unlikely to ever be under threat. Sydney has a lot of national park in urban areas starting less than 5k from the CBD. Regrettably all the recent fires near Sydney and more than 50% of all fires in Australia are deliberately lit.

     

    Our bush is designed to burn, some species of trees and shrubs on germinate only after fire, a fact the first Australians worked out 60 thousand years ago and also worked out that it is best practice to selectively burn the bush in strips each year so the source of their protein would not flee too far away.

     

    We used to share fire fighting helicopters with California, but now their fire season extends through to winter that is no longer an option.

     

    The inland fires are down to us now experiencing one in a hundred year droughts every ten years.

     

    Our willingness to address this is issue is now down to politicians.

     

    Where I sit on that issue is best illustrated by sharing the fact that we recently installed 6.6kW of solar panels on our home and export, after self consumption, roughly three times the amount of energy we consume from the grid each day. Nice to be able enjoy solar powered soft synths. Also makes me feel warm all over to know that my playing B5 leaves enough left over to power someone else's B3.

     

     

     

    Mainstage and backup plans

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    My rig is USB from laptop to Focusrite audio interface to small format mixer. 2 feeds from mixer, one to my on stage monitor second to DI to FOH.

     

    For me it is all about being able to manage gain staging. Despite many hours spent carefully balancing each patch, live the room acoustics and how loud other members of the band are vary from venue to venue so much I find I always need to able vary volume easily and often between songs. I find it better to leave the MainStage Master output alone so if I want increase or cut my volume both onstage and to FOH I adjust the big round knob on my Focusrite. It has a nice analog response facilitating small adjustments on the fly. If I just want to adjust on stage volume, which is the case most of the time, I use the fader for that output on the mixer.

     

    Despite what many will say about loose USB A and B sockets I have a laptop that has a tight fit USB A socket and the Focusrite has a tight fit USB B socket. Tight enough that I could swing the Focusrite around my head and it would not dislodge from the cable. I always carry a DI to avoid ever being the cause of audio or ground loop hum and to protect my mixer against the possibility of FOH accidently sending phantom power.

     

    I always map each channel strip volume in a patch to a rotary encoder on my controller so I can vary volume for splits and layers on the fly if needed. I also use the generic Apple core audio driver for the Focusrite, it is automatically recognised by MainStage and works like a charm. I make sure that it and the controller are plugged in to the same USB ports before I turn on the laptop so there is never any need for MS to reconfigure the attached devices on boot up. It is exactly the same state as when it was last shut down.

     

    Best expression pedal?

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I just spent a good 20 minutes googling unsuccessfully for the post I remember reading here where someone mentions the FC7's pot as a whacky one-of-a-kind model. I might be dreaming I read this, but if I'm not, it was something along the lines of the pot going through it's entire resistance range in less than its full travel. It certainly accounts for the behavior I see with my A800, even with the Ashby adapter.

    You may be referring to my comments on the FC7 in Markyboard's extensive list of expression pedals HERE

     

    Best Virtual B3 ??

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    How well a VI/AU work, that is play without any glitches live, is the first test for me. I have ST2 and ST3 and don't use them as I find them to be slow loading resource hogs.

     

    VB3 has been the Gold standard in being fast loading and good sounding since 2012. GSI's failure for many years to release a 64 bit AU version lead me to B5, which being a hybrid modeled and sampled option, uses more resources than VB3 but also plays without glitches. In my opinion it also wins on sound.

     

    Silver goes to Logic's Vintage B3. Not quite up to B5 or VB3 sound wise but plays glitch free in MainStage.

     

    And all three play well with others when using layers or splits.

     

     

    OT: 2019 Formula 1 Season

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Well I am not a fan of the FIA interfering, their decision on Renault not breaching the rules with their automated brake bias but breaching the "vibe" is BS. Ferrari gets preferential treatment, investigating why they stuffed up would be pointless. If they were stretching the rules in the previous races at least it gave us more interesting racing and has not impacted on Mercedes season. Red Bull may not see it that way though.

    New B3 VST from IK

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    My biggest beef with Guido is his open contempt for the Mac platform. He left us stuck on VB3.1 for ages after he came out with VB3.II , with no acknowledgement of our situation.

    Well I purchased 32 Lives to keep VB3 1.4 usable in MainStage. When B5 came out I switched and found it moved the bar up a notch in terms of tonewheel balance in the upper registers and overdrive without the distortion fizz I hear in VB3 1.4. VB3 2 has since been released and runs on Mac 64 bit. There is upgrade pricing of 75 for VB3 1.4 owners. The VB3 II rotary sim is available as a seperate free standalone effect to owners of VB3 II.

     

    But I am happy with B5 and there is nothing available from IK or others that offers any substantive improvement so I am sticking with it. As for rotary sims I have Melda and PSP L'otary as further options. Nothing I hear in the IK rotary improves on L'otary.

     

     

×
×
  • Create New...