Playing Soft Synths Live, Is it do-able? Options

[glenwood]

I haven't been able to find a clear-cut answer to my question anywhere, so I'm hoping you can help me out. How feasible is it to play a soft synth live with current technology? Do I need more than a laptop, controller, and sound card? From what I gather, I need some sort of virtual instrument host program or sequencer such as Cubase or Digital Performer. Any help would be greatly appreciated--thanks!

[captainrandom]

That depends

If you're only running a single soft-synth (such as Absynth, Reason, Kontakt, or Reaktor to name a few) in standalone mode then all you need is a controller and your laptop.

If, on the other hand, you want to run several soft-synths, then you'd be better off going with sx or vstack. This is because some soft-synths, in standalone mode, will assume they're the only program talking to that MIDI interface.

Cheers,
CR.

PS. Reason, especially, is just fine live! Ditto for Reaktor.

This post has been edited by lepetitmartien: Thu 30 Oct 2003, 00:53

[glenwood]

Thanks for your reply,
Is latency a big concern? If I'm running 256 mb of RAM in my laptop (Windows XP), will I be all right?

[captainrandom]

Depends on the soft-synth (and the drivers for your sound card), I guess...

Under XP, try and make sure you can get ASIO or DirectX drivers for your sound card (and that the soft-synth will use them).

[lepetitmartien]

However interesting they may be, as this is a mac only forum, PC talk is Off Topic save in open bar

Note that the 2 first posts were On Topic (the use of soft synth in general, live).

If you need to extend the subject further, I'll split the thread.