F.O.H. with a laptop +Audio Interface instead of a real mixer

~BURNY~

~BURNY~

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Apr 20, 2005
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Is it reasonably feasible or not?

A friend of mine has been pestering me with his (semi-delusional) plans to organize live events and was asking me this because he's a cheap motherfucker.

I can definitely see some huge benefits regarding the processing flexibility and even routing but I'd be scared to death of a system failure...

Would a safe latency (around 5~10ms) cause huge problems and generally speaking, what would be the pros and cons?
 
Well... unless you bring in 16channel AD/DA converter (and even if you do) it'll probably look very cheap and people will not take it seriously. Latency of around 10ms might introduce some flanging/comb filtering, but it should be OK... It's best to try it out first with some musician you know and led him decide if it's OK or not.
 
Kohugaly said:
Well... unless you bring in 16channel AD/DA converter (and even if you do) it'll probably look very cheap and people will not take it seriously. Latency of around 10ms might introduce some flanging/comb filtering, but it should be OK... It's best to try it out first with some musician you know and led him decide if it's OK or not.
Click to expand...

The way it looks is hardly his biggest concern. 16 channels AD/DA is the plan.
 
Honestly to do this properly it will likely be more expensive than getting something like one of those 16 channel presonus desks. Even with 16 channels of AD/DA you'd need preamps etc, and you really wouldn't want the DAW to hang during a live show.
 
Ok let me rephrase this:

My friend has a semi-decent Laptop (I believe a core Duo@ 2.5ghz with about 3gig of ram and windows 8) and asked if he could borrow my portable setup which consist of two 2626 and an ADA8000 instead of having to rent a mixer and outboard.

That's 24 in/out with mic preamps and watnot.

Since I am not a very friendly person (especially with my friends lol), I just shrugged it off and said "sounds risky"... But I need stronger arguments... :saint:

More seriously, I'm interested to know if someone has successfully done something similar.
 
Done it before, worked fine.

I'd recommend a control surface though. Minimise the AD/DA lengths. Run everything in low latency mode. Try it but don't be surprised if it fails the first time! :)
 
-Noodles- said:
Done it before, worked fine.

I'd recommend a control surface though. Minimise the AD/DA lengths. Run everything in low latency mode. Try it but don't be surprised if it fails the first time! :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.
Interesting... When you say low latency, how low was it? Do you remember the numbers? Which software did you use?
 
It's a mode, so any processes will change the raw in/out values.

If you run at higher sample rates (88k or higher) it will reduce the latency values - but obviously you then need more CPU and RAM for each plugin. It was sub 10ms latency though.
 
hm...i don't know if it would be that much of a problem live, but during recording 10ms of latency fucks me up big time. Can't really guess how bad it would be Live with the monitoring in such cases though.
 
Most interfaces have a mixer control panel, so you could technically just mix there and then run right back out for minimal latency (maybe 2ms), run 44.1/16-bit. Just make the computer do as little as possible, and it should turn out fine. It's only going to be when routing through a DAW, and applying plugins are you going to risk shit going weird. If you are going through a daw, use one that has the built in channel strips to do your comp/eq on. Last thing would be just to check all the power settings and set them properly for how you would recording (no hibernate, high performance power, etc).
 
Mustasch used this type of setup when I was mixing a band at the same festivals.. Though I would point out that it's a pretty big leap from a dedicated mac pro, good converters, and running pro tools with a dedicated controller to running something with a random laptop with M-audio interface. I've also encountered people using inserts via audio interface + plugins. That's quite normal also.. Via some aux-configuration, or if the inserts are bypassable on the desk, that is quite fail safe.

E: Personally I'd rather mix with a Mackie / Behringer desk without inserts than with a laptop and an M-audio interface.. And those seconds do get quite long when you stare at the Windows logo in the restart screen. Something with an i7, 16 gb ram and an ssd hd, yes.. I'd think it will hold just fine.. Some consumer grade laptop? No, wouldn't ever risk it.
 
Last week I ran an Allan & Heath Zed420 into my Fireface for processing and then out to the wedges and FOH. Went fairly well, however I'd never try it with a Profire, Saffire or anything. They're nowhere near as reliable as RME drivers.
 
If I were to go down that road, I'd go with an UAD Apollo, MOTU or other similiar product that has built in DSP, and use that for external processing.. Could be more reliable and wouldn't demand so much from the computer as the interface would do all the heavy lifting. If Apollo can be used as a stand alone dsp mixer, it'be perfect.

The workflow would still suck balls, though. And that's a absolute no-no for me. As I said, I'd rather take crappy analog gear then some kind DAW-mutant-interface-thingie with all the plugins in the world..

But if the Apollo / interface would live in a rack on the stage, and the processed tracks would would be fed from there to the FOH.. Were it designed and executed to use only with one dedicated band.. There's a consept I'd look into.
 
Ok, so the consensus seems to be that is too risky which is what I initially thought myself. Thanks for the replies guys. I think I'm gonna suggest him to rent a digital console (for the ease of internal processing and stages recall).
 
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