Stuff I've Learnt When Using A Laptop Live

Tips & Tricks
1

Just thought I would share some thoughts about what’s been happening live lately.

I’ve had 2 major problems.

  1. is constant crashes that are not program related.
  2. The other is track Skipping and Pauses as I play.

I am also using Ableton Live and Renoise.

Today I finally figured out, with the help of a sound guy, why my computer keeps crashing at any random time. I was playing an out door festival and they were running on a generator. And because the power wasn’t running at full spec I needed to filter it through a UPS. As soon as I did that no crashes. So I’m investing in a Rack mount Ups for my laptop and soundcard (using a RME fireface 400).

The other track skipping problem was my hard drive skipping because of frequency shaking the laptop (which isn’t a problem for renoise, unless it starts streaming more like ableton). One is to get a stylish foam shock absorption feature (errr … ewwww) OR to just get a SSD drive. I got a SSD drive installed and left it at that . . no more stutters in click track send to drummer.

I am now hoping that things will go a little smoother, The only other thing, which is a very polite thing to do as a musician, is to get a rack mount di box so the venue doesn’t need to find 4-8 di boxes for your laptop outputs.

Anyways, this took me 3 years to figure out T_T

2

I remember when, in the Amiga days (1993-1994), I was helping a friend of mine who was a DJ. Whenever I did (floppy) disk activities near his big DJ monitors, everything I saved was only loadable by putting the computer near to the monitors again <_<

3

I was reading they do damage the audio a little. I guess to be able to bring you own in is neat so you know what your going to get (or lose in this case :P)
I tend to not be finicky about those things anymore because if you piss the sound guy off with quality issues he is likely to set you mix to suck when you play… hehe, it’s happened once before … ugh.

4

That’s very cool shit to know hunz… I think this thread should be stickied :)

5

Some great tips there Hunz! Especially with the UPS, I’ll have to source one myself if I ever play at one of these stinking hot Aussie festivals. (btw, I hope the gigs are going good!).

I’m not sure of what Bantai is referring to DIs causing loss in signal quality - I would have thought it was the other way round?