Mostly in home user, who wants to have a fly rig that’s very portable for out of home jamming, and occasional gigs. I am a guitar and Mandolin player (acoustic and electric), plus guitar synth (via Midi Guitar 3 VST). Not religious here. I have investments in all tribes (Mac Mini M2, iPad Pro, Windows Surface Laptop Studio, Pixel 9 Pro).
I had a very elaborate acoustic/electric pedalboard that I have been able to replicate completely in software and have GP 5 set up at home and want to be able to easily take it with me. At home I use my M2 Mac Mini with a MOTU M6 interface. I also have an M-Wave Bluetooth control surface (nice for volume control of instruments and also muting).
I am considering getting an Xtone Pro interface for portability purposes and wavering between:
List item a dedicated Windows all-on-one with a detachable keyboard that I would mount on a stand (e.g. a Surface Pro)
an M4 Mac Mini that I’d put on a pedalboard (alongside the Xtone Pro) that would be output to my iPad Pro (on a stand) perhaps using a Luna Display
I kinda would like to leave my in-home set up as is, and have everything else be ready to go at a moment’s notice without having to disconnect stuff. My interest in the iPad or the Surface is the touchscreen for changing racks and variations. I realize I could get MacBook Air or other laptop that’s not touch and likely save some money.
Help me beat this up and if you are doing the same, what did you do? Thomas Brunkard covers a bunch of this in this video but would love to hear from others on the subject (especially the Mac vs. Windows discussion).
Here is my on the fly setup when I go out for a 1 hour gig at an old folks home. I use a sturdy mic stand with three Hercules holders for the iPad Pro 11” (left with BT mixer on show), iPad Pro 12.5” (on right running OnSong), and below, Surface Pro 9 (2Tb SSD and 32gig ram). I only take my studio rig out for three hour or longer gigs. The pedalboard below holds a Focusrite Solo audio interface and there is also a Microsoft Thunderbolt powered hub top left. No cables connected in the picture. I built the pedal board myself.
P.S. Sorry about the overhead lights reflection:)
Thanks for this… I have a portable USB display for Mac Mini (wired, but non-touch), but its 18.5" which seems too big (but I can see how this would make sense… there appears to be a lot of smaller ones. I suspect that I would not need to do a lot of keyboarding for my use case, and can do as it appears you do and control a bunch of stuff via MIDI (foot witch), of even my small control surface mounted on the stand.
As I mentioned, there are no cables shown in the pic. The small iPad controls mixing in my HK Lucas Nano 608i which is connected via bluetooth. The 12.5” iPad on the right is connected to the Surface Pro 9 via Ethernet cable through an adapter and the Microsoft powered hub. There is a bt pedal shown in the middle front of the pedalboard for advancing through each song. The PC and the 12.5” iPad both run Bome Network allowing them to talk to each other. The 12.5” iPad runs OnSong which is a lyrics/midi controller. It supplies every single midi command to the Surface that you can think of, inc Program change, muting and volume change etc. When performing, I never have to touch the Surface as the iPad does it all though midi commands embedded in the OnSong headings, ie, Intro, Verse 1, Chorus 1 etc. I find the Surface suits my needs. I can run large rigs of 500 plus songs with loading taking anywhere between 4 to 10 seconds per song according to what is in the song. I don’t use set lists, but load each song as an individual file. I have predictive set to 1. I use Ethernet because I have found wireless to be unreliable and subject to interference when out in the world.
