Cubase for gigging???

[Rezzonator]

In our band we're using cubase for backing tracks (drums, aditional synthlines and basses). That works fine: we hook our laptop via the line out to a stereo-channel of the mixer.
But I don't know of that's gonna work for live gigging. The following worries us:
1. How do we hook up to a mixer and PA? Using the line out gives the PA-man no possibility to adjust the sound/mix.
2. How do we switch between different songs? Do I always have to open seperate projects, incl. de VST's? After 3 or 4 songs the laptop will crash!!
3. How do we get an even level for the different songs?

Does anyone have any experience? Do we need to buy a soundcard with multiple outputs? Please help!

Rezzz

 

[TimOBrien]

Burn off the backing tracks to a CD.
(That's what I'll be doing)

I personally wouldn't trust a sequencer and computer (especially Windows!) to run without crashing during a performance, whereas a cheap CD or DVD player that plays CD-Rs is a no-brainer....

 

[xstatic]

Personally, I would trust a laptop (as long as it is set up properly) much more than a CDR that is prone to scratches, misreads in different players, skipping etc...

If you want, you could get some sort of firewire soundcard that offers 8 outputs and run the 8 ouputs through DI's so that the FOH engineer has the ability to balance certain things in real time as the room and other instruments etc... change.

If you do end up using Cubase live, I would highly reccomend you open only one song at a time just to keep things a little more simple and more stable. This means that you will have up to maybe 30 seconds between songs. The good news is that if you have thirty seconds between each song your guitar players will have absolutely no excuse to ever be out of tune.

 

[johnny5dm]

I'd say it depends on the sound man. If it's the same guy every time who really knows your stuff, then you could hook up a multi-output recording interface with an output for each various instrument. However, I'd tend to agree that laptop/recording interface/cubase isn't exactly the most reliable way to go.

If you don't have a regular sound man, anyone running the sound is not going to have an easy time mixing your stuff unless it's pretty obvious. Your mix is going to be better for the most part if you mix it yourself. As far as playback... a few options: CD is the easiest, although it could be a little unreliable. You could use an iPod - a bit more reliable, perhaps, but not the easiest to use for a show. My personal preference, though, would be to get one of those boss sampling pedals - I just ran sound for a band a few weeks ago that used one of those - worked great the whole show, stored the whole lot of music on the sampler, and was controllable as a foot pedal. That way, you have the control. More freedom for you.

 

[leddy]

Or, musicians could actually play the stuff.

 

[Rezzonator]

Thanx guys! The CD-R will be my back-up. Good suggestion. I probably have to buy a firewire soundcard. I'll check the net for some.
Maybe for stability I'll have to mixdown all the tracks seperately, and create new projects without the VST's and VST-i's.

 

[Rezzonator]

BTW, strange that so few replies are posted on this issue. What does this mean? Cubase is only used in homerecording, I mean ‘Home’ and ‘Recording’? Not for ‘gigs’ and not for …well… ‘playback’?

 

[digit]

I can only relate a personal experience.

We used to use Opcode Vision for our midi stuff and it worked great.
We had the monitor behind the drummer who was fed a click track.
He'd be able to select a song (a,b,c,d,e,f, etc....) he'd hear an 8 bar count in and it worked amazingly.
We rehearsed for about 6 months and had it down pat.

Then we played Hard Rock Cafe at the Superdome in Toronto.
Not one of the samples would load into our Akai keyboard. The bass amp wouldn't work. And the computer kept crashing.

We ended up only being able to play about half of our sets... the rest we improvised without the MIDI backup.

As soon as we got back to the rehearsal hall, we hooked everything up and everything worked perfect. Not one problem.

Ever since then, we've made a tape backup of all the midi stuff just in case.
There's no way we can rely on the MIDI working.

To this day, I still don't know what the problem was except maybe there was a glitch in the voltage or something. Either way....MIDI and computers are totally unreliable for live shows. You can use them, but always have a taped (not CD) backup, just in case of emergencies. Nobody will know the difference.

 

[Rezzonator]

Hmmm... I see...
I'getting a bit nervous. We have 2 months to make up our mind. But I reckon we have to make a back-up CD.

 

[robbieb]

Yeh we used to have a midi sequencer, worked fine one day, clitched another
why god knows!,
Now for live work, we use (and I think most working bands,duos etc in England) use MiniDiscs, not one problem yet!!(you can bet your life,now this weekend it wont work!!) Minidiscs can be brought cheap, and the playeres too! at least the discs are cassette like incases, and quite durable.

 

[xstatic]

It really sucks when gear goes down at a show, but any gear can do that. Seems to me that if it has only happened once, that is actually pretty reliable. It also seems like something else was also going on if multiple pieces all of a sudden malfunctioned at once. In the end, I think minidisc is probably the most stable format. It is very resistent to skipping due to stage and PA vibrations. Reel to reel is also very reliable. The problem with CD's is that they scratch very easily and often times CD problems aren't discovered until it is way too late to fix them. With minidisc you can also get a little MD player that does not even have record functions which is great for stage type stuff (no one can accidentally erase your disc). I still find computers to be reliable if you have set them up properly and take good care of them. Many people use them without problems in live settings. Any gear runs the risk of malfunctioning. Especially if you are constantly banging them around in trucks, vans, and trailers, loading them in and out of venues etc... For me personally, I would rather run a laptop and have a mini disc on hand for a backup plan. I definately would not want to run a CD from on stage where anything could happen to the CD player (vibration skips, scratch sips etc... and if I was to run a CD from stage, I would want it to be in a laptop where playback seems to be more stable. I have run many a show where even at FOH the volume was up enough to cause CD players to stop, skip etc... I even did one outdoor show where it was so cold that the CD player was taking about 60 seconds just for the tray to eject, and another 60 to 120 seconds for the disc to spin up to where the player could read it.

 

[dazza]

I've used Cubase + Reason live for over a year and have only ever had one problem... which was with Reason.

Luckily we had mp3s of all our tracks on the computer, so no-one knew the difference

 

[noisewreck]

Maybe for stability I'll have to mixdown all the tracks seperately, and create new projects without the VST's and VST-i's.

This is exactly what I was going to suggest. Even if you don't do a full mixdown, it would be a good idea to bounce the VSTi tracks to audio. Also, if the VSTs in question are things like EQ, you might be better off grouping tracks that use same (or similar) EQ settings and sending them out through a separate output on the soundcard and have the FOH mixer deal with the EQ and such, or, if the VSTs are part of the sound, then bounce them as well. The idea is you want to have as little plugins running as possible for two reasons: 1) less drain on the computer = less chances of weird issues happening, 2) the projects will load much more quickly.

I personally wouldn't trust a sequencer and computer (especially Windows!) to run without crashing during a performance.

Tell that to Tim Exile

In any case, make sure to have a very clean system. Absolutely no things like antivirus programs and other "system enhancing" crap should be running. It might be a good idea to run the laptop off of a good quality UPS, as they also have power conditioning circuitry, so even if there are weird voltage issues at the venue, they will be filtered out before the power hits the laptop.