Hi everyone,
a friend of mine involved me in a Music project and am putting up together a minimum setup for some live gigs, but have no clear idea. I tend to prefer light weight / small space / setup. I’m on a budget too.
Currently I have:
Nord Wave 2 (as the only one keyboard I intend to use)
Zotax Z Box Mini PC with Windows
Gig Performer
Omnisphere
Keyscape
that’s it.
Am looking for:
an audio interface. Have targetted the following alternatives : Motu M4, SSL2, Audient ID4 or ID14, Radial Key Largo.
an usb/midi footswitch to move up/down on my Gig Performer set list. Have started looking at
Boss FS-7, Line 6 FBV Express MKII, Hotone Ampero Control, Lead Foot FS2.
As said the smaller the better. Budget for audio interface around 200 eur +/-50%, while for the foot switch around 100 eur +/-50% but I can spend more for both awaiting a little bit.
Thank you for any comment /experience you want to share.
Cheers / luca
You have to focus on the quality and reliability of the audio interface, which is a major piece of equipment. @npudar is right about the Radial Key Largo, which is basically a mixer. It’s better to choose a real audio interface and use a separate audio mixer if you need one.
The other models you mention are relevant and you might also be interested in the models from Focusrite.
If you want optimum quality and reliability, go to RME
As far as controllers are concerned, I used to have a Line 6 FBV Express MKII which I’ve replaced with a Hotone Ampero Control + an expression pedal and dual footswitch (for reasons of weight on public transport). Both are technically equal.
I wouldn’t recommend the Lead Foot FS2, which gave out on me very quickly. I use a Hotone FS-1 Ampero instead.
If you want to add one or more expression pedals, go for a safe bet, avoid cheap pedals.
I use several Roland EV-5 which are light but reliable, especially in terms of the accuracy of the data sent.
Yes, it seems to be so with Windows and the Radial Key Largo. I’m an on MacOs Sonoma, live with a Fantom 06, GigPerformer 5, Radial Key Largo and never had a problem with the Key Largo.
Thank you Hermon and all. RME too expensive for me. Then we have Motu M4, SSL2, Audient ID4/ID14 and have added Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 3rd gen. Any advice?
I use that for guitar. For vocals there are people complaining about the pre-amplifiers. I didn’t study these complaints in depth because I’m happy
Edit: Sometimes it pays off to check which drivers do you’re job the best. When I use it for performance, the latest do work fine, but on my development device I also use vb-matrix-coconut. The latter crashed when I used older drivers. That forced me to use newer focusrite drivers. With no bad side-effect, btw.
One thing I like about the focusrite is that it provides separate level controls for headphone out and main out (e.g. to PA) and you can use both at the same time. This was important for me so that I could use headphones as personal monitoring in a gig. My previous interface muted the main outs when you plugged headphones in. The 4i4 can also be powered via USB from your laptop/computer, which may be important to you if you don’t want to have to plug into the mains.
Well, I’m an RME user with the benefit of TotalMix (which enables just about everything), but I still thought this possibility was an obvious one. Apparently not?
An important thing on Win is to check if the ASIO drivers of the audio interface are proprietary and multi-client (such that you can run several instances of GP concurrently or a DAW+GP). Motu M4 is as far as I know! Forget about the ASIO4ALL driver, its latency is awful.
You might not need the foot pedal if you only plan to use it to navigate through your setlist. It’s easy in GP to assign any button, knob, pad, or whatever, on your controller keyboard to do that. If you can afford a quick second to take your hand off the keys between songs to do that, then that approach might be worth considering since you said you wanted to travel light.
That’s what I do. I already have two sustain pedals. I am glad to avoid that extra bulk. There are likely times when it would have been nice to hit a pedal to change song parts, but I am happy with the trade off.(Changing song parts is more of an issue than switching between full songs).
@Seet Many thanks . Am currently trying to get as much info as I can on the subject but have never met this comparison. Very interesting. it has changed my mind. Now my main candidates are: SSL2, Audient ID24 or Universal Audio Volt 276. Have also read that is important for a live use (keyboard) to have more than two outputs, hence Audient ID24 is a step ahead of the other two. Now have found also another gear that seems very interesting. It is the Iconnectivity Audio4C, but cannot find any in depth review and seems to be something little different . Any advice on this?
@richforman@jeffn1 totally agree with you, the main issue is switching between song parts. Switching between full song not a problem I can deal with that via pc keyboard. This is the reason why I was more interested in a pedal with only two switches, like the boss FS6, but it hasn’t any midi connection and I have already the two only input in my Nord Wave 2 engaged with sustain pedal and expression/volume pedal. About assigning buttons, instead of pedal, this is less practical to me. Especially because am not using a midi keyboard but a synth as the main and only gear, hence I can assign button via Midi but have to remember that same button has different use with my synth, little confusing for me. Solution could be to buy a midi controller instead of a pedal.
@pollupice I don’t know the models you mentioned, I have only experience with the Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 3rd Gen and the SSL 2+. The SSL 2+ has 4 outputs as well by the way so that makes it on par with the Audient .
The focusrite has a nice driver with lots of routing capabilities. However it made my laptop (windows) crash to a BSOD when unplugging the USB while running GP (I admit, that should normally never happen).
The SSL 2+ has the most basic driver imaginable with no routing capabilities, but it does the job very well for me and is stable as a rock.
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