I have a question regarding battery backup power for the off-stage PC.
When I first started using VSTs (I think it was when NI-B4 was first released) I used a small form factor PC with an PCI soundcard. It worked great - except for occasional power fluctuations, which would cause the PC to crash. It was especially problematic when we played some outdoor gigs where power was supplied thru a generator. For awhile I started carrying a battery backed up PSU, which of course added significantly to the weight ad size of the rig. I was quite happy when I was able to find/afford a powerful enough laptop with an external soundcard and since then I’ve not experienced any power issues, which I assume is due to the internal battery.
For those of you using PCs (not laptops), have you experienced crashes due to power fluctuations? If so, what do you do to prevent them?
Thank you - David
Yeah, I can relate: on one of our gigs, someone from the house kept messing with the power supply during our setup, cutting off power without any warning multiple times - I nearly killed the guy…
Usually, we have pretty decent power here in Germany, and I’m reeeeeally suspicious of the kind of gig where you get generator power. In that case, I’d probably carry a UPS device plus a power conditioner - and still worry
I always use a UPS now. Primarily because my Kronos has a 3 minute boot type whilst pre-loading samples from SSD, and that was one recommendation I picked up from Korg forums: if you gig with a Kronos, a UPS is a must. Of course now I have an NUC PC in my gig rack, not a laptop, for Cantabile then it is protecting that now as well.
I remember one gig we did in Pure Floyd (the one where I lost my Cantabile 2 setup due to plugging a USB 2 device in a USB 3 port and only got it back 5 mins before we started!) where the power was really dodgy and tripping all over place, but at least the keyboards just kept running thanks to my APC UPS, which was a blessed relief given all the other problems I had!
That was the gig where I learnt the hard way to
Label all ports and cables if one device is really fussy about being in a USB2 port (my Focusite Diamond interface) - in all the panic I failed to notice that, and starting Cantabile 2 in that config caused a sh*t load of problems
Do not start Cantabile 2 unless all connections are correct, as per #1 (Cantabile 3 is much more tolerant in this respect! )
Backups are fantastic, but useless if you do not have them with you, and they are 120 miles round trip away from you, and you have an hour before the gig starts…!!!
)