I've been gigging with laptop exclusively for 4 years now. Started with MainStage and a late 2011 MacBook. I never used much integrated sounds/instruments but instead used different 3rd party synths/sample libraries.
As my setup grew I wanted to optimize it as much as possible, so that one sample library / synth is loaded only once, thus reducing load time. With MainStage this proved to be quite cumbersome as you need to add a layout control for every plugin parameter you want to change across patches. And with MS upgrades a lot of this broke.
So I tried GigPerformer but it only provided low running cpu and simple usage and I still couldn't do what I wanted regarding loading one library only once.
Now I'm a happy user of Cantabile 3 Performer.
But I must warn that in order to make a reliable setup there is a lot of learning and work involved including a lot of trial and error before fully understand how things work. But if you accept it you get rewarded with the best sound possible in a compact form, not possible to achieve with only one hardware keyboard.
It's not for everyone but I'm very happy with the end result. It's just not an easy path.
Live playing with laptop / controller
in The Keyboard Corner
Posted
I've been gigging with laptop exclusively for 4 years now. Started with MainStage and a late 2011 MacBook. I never used much integrated sounds/instruments but instead used different 3rd party synths/sample libraries.
As my setup grew I wanted to optimize it as much as possible, so that one sample library / synth is loaded only once, thus reducing load time. With MainStage this proved to be quite cumbersome as you need to add a layout control for every plugin parameter you want to change across patches. And with MS upgrades a lot of this broke.
So I tried GigPerformer but it only provided low running cpu and simple usage and I still couldn't do what I wanted regarding loading one library only once.
Now I'm a happy user of Cantabile 3 Performer.
But I must warn that in order to make a reliable setup there is a lot of learning and work involved including a lot of trial and error before fully understand how things work. But if you accept it you get rewarded with the best sound possible in a compact form, not possible to achieve with only one hardware keyboard.
It's not for everyone but I'm very happy with the end result. It's just not an easy path.
Regards