Hello everyone, sorry if this gets a little long winded but I want to try and be as clear on the goal as possible as not to waste your time.
I’m in the process of testing Gig Performer to see if it is going to work for our band set up. I haven’t been successful just quite yet, but I don’t want to give up on Gig Performer for a couple of reasons. 1) So far support has been incredible. I emailed them yesterday about my trial version expiring after only 4 days and got an immediate response. Then this morning I emailed them at 6am Texas time, not expecting a reply till much later and got an immdiate response again. The back and forth of emails was almost like realtime chat! Hell, I may purchase the software even it if doesn’t work out for us just to support them. 2) I have had a lot of fun working with the software. As long as I’m using the third party plugins that GP can use internally and not trying to intergrate it with my DAWs proprietary software synths, there’s been no frustration and it works as advertised. Creating widgets is fun and intuitive. Just a really cool application.
Support suggested I come on the community and pose my question here because this is what they look at to see what tutorials they need to create and to get feedback etc. and that surely someone else has already done what I’m trying to do. I’m kinda in a crunch time learning GP and setting up our new show.
Here’s what we currently do and what I’d like to do with GP
Currently we use Studio One’s show page and a Quantum 2626 interface to run our entire show. (2 keyboard controllers, bass, guitar, 2 vocal mics and an EFNOTE Electronic drum kit) Studio One’s Show Page is servicable, however it’s MIDI automation and MIDI playback features are pretty much none existent. The majority of the sounds we play live are proprietary to Studio One.
What I’d like to do is use GP to run the whole show and simply use Studio One as an external sound module so we can still use the sounds we’re used to and not have to go and find replacements in third party plugins just to use GP. I had this somewhat working by using GP relays, but that is not a productive way to do it because we may have to use 50-60 different sounds during a show and there is a limit of 10 relays. Relays are also limited on midi information sending from what I can see. Ideally, I’d like to send patch changes from GP at particular parts of a song to a couple of tracks containing soft synths in Studio One so I don’t have to load a ton of plugin soft synths at once into Studio One or if that’s not possible, I’d like to have all the sounds loaded into Studio One so they are ready to go and just mute and unmute their respective tracks by sending midi from GP (so all sounds don’t all trigger when playing the keyboard contollers, just the unmuted ones).
I’m sure GP is powerful enough to do this perhaps using the IAC drive (I’m on a Mac) but not sure how to go about it. If anyone has done it or there is a tutorial already and you could point me in the right direction that would be greatly appreciated. The tutorial on using the relays was too basic and that method doesn’t really work for the aforementioned reasons.
Wow thank you guys for the replies. I was trying to use the IAC driver but it wasn’t showing up in GP, when I saw @pianopaul’s screenshot I realized I should check the “device is online” box and voila, it showed up in GP. Clearly the consensus from you guys is IAC so going to give it a shot now that it’s appearing in GP.
I don’t know anything about Studio One but are their plugins that unique that you can’t find 3rd party equivalents (either free or paid)? If they’re synths, have you considered using GP’s Auto Sampler to capture the sounds from Studio One and then just use them directly in GP?
We appreciate that but we’d rather you buy it because it works for you
Well, there are lots of ways to do this – I’m not sure why you would need multiple GP Relayer plugins - does Studio One not have a “master bus” (like our global rackspace) where you could just use a single GP Relayer plugin to capture all outgoing audio? Same for MIDI input?
The proprietary sounds aren’t necessarily that unique, but we (the band) all have a the Pro+ plan so we have everything that Presonus puts out and they update frequently. Since we also use the collaboration features of Studio One, this ensures we all have the same sounds and plugins. When we do buy 3rd party, either only one of us has it or we all buy it. It’s just easier and consitent this way. That said, I will look into the GP Auto Sampler. Clearly there is much I do not know about the power of GP but I can’t wait to learn. I’ve pretty much dedicated all of today to dive in deep.
does Studio One not have a “master bus” (like our global rackspace) where you could just use a single GP Relayer plugin to capture all outgoing audio? Same for MIDI input?
When I was just trying to get anything to work, I did just use one relay, the problem is all three of us may be using a different sound from Studio One at the same time and I’d like to control the volume of each inside GP which from what I see needed a relay for each band member. Also, that doesn’t solve the issue of muting only certain sounds or sending patch changes.
Well, I am LOVING messing with Gig Performer, so much so that I’m done messing with trying to use the proprietary synths or even intergrate with Studio One (well maybe to record the shows live using it).
They are the same style as the ones we use for Presonus and it will be much quicker for me to find similar sounds in those than trying to use Studio One as a sound module or use the GP Auto Sampler to recreate them.
Pretty sure I’ll be purchasing GP by the end of the day.
Thanks again for the replies and happy jamming everyone!
I don’t know why but in my testing experience GP relayer is faster than iac driver. Although I use both. To transmit midi to GP I use iac. To send midi and/or audio from GP I use GP relayer.
