Full laptop to PA, avoiding the sound man?

[kev]

Hey guys,

What do you reckon to a live setup, with a beastly quad core laptop. Two 5150s into impulses, a DI'd bass and roland kit straight into a laptop loaded with dkfhs 2, mixed nicely and out through the PA directly monitored?

The aim, to get a perfect live sound and minimise gear transported!

 

[Nebulous]

Might sound good in theory, but isn't half the point of the engineer at a live gig to be there when shit hits the fan and it needs to be fixed mid song?

 

[kev]

Theyve not done too much for me yet in my time lol

 

[Ermz]

Are you going to be outputting them as individual tracks to the FOH desk? You could have a great mix going ITB but I've heard some of the FOH tunings do terrible, nay, fucking abysmal things to some of my favourite sounding albums. You need to have the flexibility to EQ and treat the tracks individually and QUICKLY when the system blows arse (read: 99.9% of the time).

Fuck I hate live sound.

 

[kev]

It was just a passing thought really, as a new band is in the making and i dont want our live sound to suffer this time!

 

[tgs]

Hmm, well, just a quick thought, since I do both studio work and FOH. I've recorded some of my live work straight from the mixing console and most of it sounds pretty weird, not at all what I would do in the studio. Why? I adapt the sound to what I hear in the room/venue. And in general, the recordings I've done in good venues (from the desk) sounds very cool, while recordings from crappy venues usually sound pretty weird, despite the fact that everything sounded great in the venue!

Bottom line: live sound is not the same as studio sound at all. You have to adapt WAY more.