MainStage+Apogee Duet questions

Hello, first of all sorry if I make some mistakes explaining myself, I'm spanish so english is not my usual language...

 

anyway, the thing is that I play on a band that we are 4 members using a lot of stuff, including 2 midi keyboards, 3 synths (korg MicroKorg, Yamaha V30 and a lovely casio PT-1 ), acoustic, electric guitar, bass, and chello with picks...

Basically, we wanted to know if Apogee duet would be enough to go live thru MainStage on a Macbook -Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz) with 2GB Ram.

Usually, we wouldn't be playing all those instruments at once thru duet, as every song has a specific setup (for example, in one song we would need only to drop a sample and tap the tempo for the guitar and for another song we will loop the chelo and use a mic thru duet for an AU vocoder (Sonalsik Robotronic)...

Is it possible to be all 4 pluged in thru Duet even we aren't using any FX thru MainStage or we will need a better (and expensive) piece of hardware? I have right now a TASCAM Us-144 and it's impossible to play a note without latency or weird "tremoloish" audio looping...

 

 

Which could be better, buy something bigger or buy 2 duets for 2 macbooks?

 

I know it sounds weird, but i'm really interested in knowing which hardware should we buy before commiting the mistake of buying something that won't fit in our needs. If anyone has a better idea please give us some advice.

 

Thanks a lot for your time.

You'll have limits with audio of only the two discreet channels. If you play more than two mono instruments or one stereo instrument you'll have to have a mixer to mix down to the two channels. Do you really want guitar and bass or guitar and cello to share the same audio processing??

 

Can't comment on doubling up on Duets. It may be problematic.

So, in our case, which could be the best option? I've seen the apogee Symphonic Mobile System but it's completly out of our price range.

Basically, we will use mainstage for using the built-in plugins -Ultrabeat patches- as well as some AU's that we use a lot (mellotrons, soft synths...) and also apply some effects on different sources (for exemple in one song the guitar will have a lot of reverb and, as I said, in other one we could loop a chelo).

We were about to use Ableton Live for those purposes, but I think we could get more used to a Logic-based enviroment as we recorded everything on Logic (and we have a lot of sounds and presets coming from it).

I don't know exactly how our main set could be, because each of us use different gear in every song... but does it mean that everything should be pluged all gig long? No idea... We won't really use mainstage effects/midi knobs in all instruments all the time, but it's true that we really need more than 2 or 3 different sources, and maybe duet it won't fit for us... so which audio solutions should we buy? We also have an iMac but I think we should stick on the macbook as we are going to be a long time on the road.

 

If it helps, I think we will use mainstage basically for:

-Droping backing tracks. (also i would like to know if MainStage has a similar feature to Live's Warp engine, so we could tap a backing track and drop it on that-day-live-tempo without pitch issues or everybody slowing/speeding up to adjust to the backing track original tempo.)

 

-Change between different midi instruments (piano, mellotron flutes, synth Bassline...) with a simple touch of a button on my edirol PCR-50

 

-Apply loops to real instruments (guitar/voices/chello) and fx -distortion or delays).. not more than one at a time, but, as I said, coming from different sources -we could change jacks between songs but it could be a completly mess for the guy on the desk-

 

-Vocoder controlled via midi keyboard.

 

so, once again, what should be our best buy?

 

I think in the next album we would do everything with an accoustic guitar and a pair of maracas... seriously.

Why not look at the Ensemble? It's cheaper than the Symphony. Ask the question in the Tech area on what's the best mobile 8 in/out interface and you'll get some good recommendations.

 

Regarding your other questions:

 

but does it mean that everything should be pluged all gig long?

 

 

I would probably have gear plugged in per set, if not all night. But you don't distinguish between MIDI controllers and audio instruments. You may have enough ports for all MIDI controllers to be plugged in at once. Remember, MainStage can only play one patch at a time, albeit you can set up channel strips in that patch to respond to different controllers (or to all or none of the controllers).

 

With the Duet you only have two inputs so you'd have to decide what you want to do, as discussed in my last post (well the negatives anyway).

 

 

-Droping backing tracks. (also i would like to know if MainStage has a similar feature to Live's Warp engine

 

- MainStage can change tempo of files in Playback without changing pitch. I am not familiar enough with Live to compare the two programs.

 

 

-Change between different midi instruments (piano, mellotron flutes, synth Bassline...) with a simple touch of a button on my edirol PCR-50

 

This is possible. May be best achieved by changing patches.

 

Apply loops to real instruments

 

I don't understand this.

 

-Vocoder controlled via midi keyboard.

 

Your parameters should be mappable so you can control them

 

the next album we would do everything with an accoustic guitar and a pair of maracas

 

Something to be said about that - we get so wrapped up in the technology we forget how nice it is to do something simple like that - and how really musical it can be.

thanks a lot for your help... i'm thinking about the ensemble since I posted here, because we could have all our setup controlled with only one computer. It's a lot more expensive but in fact is like we all 4 buy an audio interface for each one of us, as duet won't fit exactly with what we need.

 

Yes, I was no joking about the pair of maracas... it's being such a nightmare for us to drop all we did on our album that we probably will stick in real instruments and something more Beirut/Devotchka stuff than this kind of Tv on the radio meets Vienna Symphonic Orchesta meets Daft Punk that we are right now...

we are musicians, for god's sake!

Welcome for the help.

 

And I totally relate to simpler music (from a technology, layered sounds perspective). I often do solo jazz guitar or duos and trios. Very honest, no backing tracks, minimal technology. Make it happen live, no flex time or pitch shifting, no plug-ins to fix your tone.

 

Both worlds are great though.........!

If you don't want to shell out for the Apogee I suggest you check out Presonus' stuff. It's really good quality for the price, offers fairly good latency performance (totally acceptable amounts for live performance) and you can build a fairly large system with ADAT Lightpipe.

If you don't want to shell out for the Apogee I suggest you check out Presonus' stuff. It's really good quality for the price, offers fairly good latency performance (totally acceptable amounts for live performance) and you can build a fairly large system with ADAT Lightpipe.

 

They still don't have any stable SnowLeopard drivers, not a good sign!

My firestudio project works perfectly fine and stable with snow leopard. I don't know about lightpipe systems, though.

My firestudio project works perfectly fine and stable with snow leopard. I don't know about lightpipe systems, though.

 

Doesn't work stable here with the beta drivers.