Merging Projects From Different Computers/sequence, Mac & PC Options

[Atahualpa]

Hi,
I am collaborating with a friend on an electronic music project, now, he works on a PC and Cubase, I work on DP4.52 and Mac. If we decided to use only one computer on a live performance (to have a unique internal clock), could we keep separated audio track versions of his and my tunes so that we could mix them in real time (mixing within each tune and against eachother for continuity)? In this case what kind of platform would be use to montage his and my material (which I guess would be an array of audio tracks)? The other only possiblility I see is creating MP3s of his and my stuff, but in this case we would have a much smaller maneouver margin, since we could mix the tunes against eachother using a virtual mixer like Traktor DJ, but we could not manipulate induividual tracks within each tune during the gig.

I hope my above description is clear enough and hopefully some of you have already experience on this topic.

Thanx in advance and groove on!!!
Atahualpa

[Atahualpa]

Hi,

I am collaborating on an electronic music project with a friend working on a PC with Cubase, me, I use DP4.52 running on a Mac. We're wondering if there's a platform that would allow us to use his tunes and mine as multiple audio tracks sequences, (instyead of stereo files) to have full control of individual instruments and at the same time be able to mix them live within each song and against eachother, using a single computer (to follow a unique internal clock).
The only other way I could think of, in order to ensure the continuity needed for this type of music, would be to convert all songs to say, MP3 and use a virtual mixer like TraktorDJ. However, this would completely restrict the maneuver margin for live mixing each individual track (instrument) within songs. Has anyone already been confronted with such a situation?

I hope my explanation makes sense and thank you in advance for sharing your knowledge!
Keep groovin',
Atahualpa

[lepetitmartien]

I merged both thread (please, no crossposting as the input is slightly different, I kept both.

Have you looked after Ableton Live? You would be way more souple than with traktor.

[Atahualpa]

Thanks a lot Lepetitmartien!

Is there a way to try out Abbleton (demo version)? Because I think the software is pretty expensive...

Sorry for having posted twice my question, but it seemed the first time I lost connection and it did not post it immediately.

Rgds, Atahualpa

[banevt]

I have been doing sort of the same thing with a friend of mine. He is running a PC with Cubase and I'm running Pro Tools LE. We haven't really tried it in a live situation yet but here are some things we encountered. We were either using the usb midi output of my oxgen 8 into him to sync. I don't know much about Cubase but I know when he started to add more synths and FX we sometimes had to slide things around to make them sync. Most of what we did was audio that we were placing on the fly so we both had some stuff beforehand and a little playing synths. I know I need to get more ram and he may need to as well. There is also another program from musiclab called midioverlan cp that would let you send midi on both the mac and pc over a network to each other through ethernet. I don't know if that would be a more reliable source for midi. We haven't tried that yet and it seems that Tiger now has that option integrated into the OS. When it worked it was kind of cool having a little laptop jam session and we've come up with some good stuff we were thinking about trying to keep most of it as audio files and save a little room for shows and certain synths and sounds. We still have some bugs to work out but us putting it together live was also kind of cool and maybe could be part of the situation live. Let me know if you stumble upon any miracle software or ideas.

[lepetitmartien]

Is there a way to try out Abbleton (demo version)? Because I think the software is pretty expensive...

In our superlative Software section… (thanks to the dedication of June Bug, anyone wants to help?)

Sorry for having posted twice my question, but it seemed the first time I lost connection and it did not post it immediately.

No harm done… I have a delete button and I'm a clicking maniac

Banevt, yes there's a MIDI network into Tiger (WOOAH GREAT) but we're still waiting for some feedback on it. Like the Logic nodes it's aimed to gigabit ethernet, but I'm sure it can be reasonably used over a 100 Mb network… now, let's see.

Now, I'm sure some talks we had in this forum last year didn't get unread at Apple If only they could remember the Mini G5 with gigabit ethernet too…

This post has been edited by lepetitmartien: Fri 13 May 2005, 21:54

[td3k]

Like Banevt mentioned previously, Sync MIDI clock is probably the best bet. Set one of your computers as Master and the other as Slave. When the sync Master hits play, all sequencers start in sync. MIDI clock can sometimes be a bit squirelly wandering around at times. Experiment with using either computer as Master to find the best combination that stays in sync. You could run all of your audio into one mixer for full control over your master mix, you could even record the result to a CD deck or a third computer.

Good luck,