Well, after many months preparation, the new rig described above, and re-pictured here had its first outing at a low key open mic afternoon at my local music venue, where I was trying out some new ideas to see if the venue owner would like to put on a solo gig based on them (he did ). It went very well, and well received.
So, as well as the Montage and Kronos, I had Cantabile running a backing track for one song, and then a solid click for another where timing is crucial and everything needs to be tempo synced, but the icing on the cake was finally having a computer powerful enough to run the more demanding VSTis.
So, in this set I used
Spectrasonics Omnisphere and a lovely vocal pad sound called Ocean Garden from the Plugin-Guru “Kreatureesque” sound set
UH-E Diva (in many places!) and REPRO-1
Arturia Minimoog
XILS Polymoog
XILS PolyKobol
Valhalla Reverb
With Cantabile providing all the splits and layers and routing between everything. Despite having had a few crashes in the studio, as this was not really a “proper gig”, I went with using the latest 3511 build, and it worked without a hitch.
So, its great to finally have this rig together with Cantbile at the heart of it. I am going to have a lot of fun with it with all of the various permutations it allows me.
Kudos due to Brad for making such a fantastic program, and thanks to all of the advice and help I’ve had over the past year in getting this together
Updated pic with the addition of 3 UPSes, a home made 2U fan module, DMXIS lighting controller and a DMX splitter since my post last May. The DMX splitter is so that I can add one DMX signal cable to each snake that carries power and audio to each PA speaker & light bar, rather than daisychaining from light to light.
The blue USB cables are breakout loops from the PC to the mixer and USB hub, so that I can quickly plug in another PC or sound interface if something breaks.
The 3 UPSes are low voltage, and set at
19V - for the PC and WIFI router.
15V - for the MOTU mixer),
12V - for the Roland keyboard and the 13 port powered USB hub
A little cable tidying to do… Each UPS takes 3 18650 Lithium-Ion batteries and is an OpenUPS2 from here. They are bolted to the underside of the top of the rack.
I’m one of the few that prefers low voltage inputs to equipment so that I can UPS enable them like this.
A 240V UPS would not have fitted into this rack and would have weighed much much more because it uses lead acid batteries.
These UPSs have saved me from a 3 minute restart and potential file corruption a number of times since I put them in last September.
The 3 green lights/buttons on the front of the rack show me the UPS status and are also switches so I can easily turn them off after use. Otherwise the UPSes would keep power going until their batteries flatten.
From the back, the fan unit comes out and disconnects via one jack plug. Then the top connector U comes off with wingnuts and I rest it on top of the rack. If necessary, it mostly has the ouputs from the ADA8200 and USB which all disconnect easily.
From the front, That top connector block comes out easily enough which lets me get hands in if I need to check anything. For serious work, the ADA and the power switch module have enough slack to slide outwards partially.
There is enough cable slack everywhere to slide any individual item out and/or all of the panel connector modules.
A couple of pictures of my keyboard rig from the IQ show near Milan, Italy last night. First gig with the latest Cantabile 3500-series build, and it worked flawlessly.
Forgot to shout out that I saw you tucked away on Page 123 of the latest Prog issue! Which was reporting on your IQ Islington gig (shame it is on the opposite side of the country to me!).
PS: Hope the new album is coming on. “Road of Bones” is currently playing as I type this!
This is my first post. My main instrument is bass but over the years I’ve occasionally filled in on keyboards. I started home recording in the 90’s with a Pentium II running Cakewalk on DOS, a Korg M1, a Voce MicroB/Spin, an Alesis D4 plus bass and guitar. I used a Tascam 238S 8 track cassette and a Mackie 1604 mixer.
My latest home recording setup is Reaper running on a 3.4 Ghz i7 Dell Optiplex with 16GB RAM and a pair of Samsung Evo SSDs, a Lexicon Alpha, an AT2020, a Midisport 2x2, a Korg NanoKontrol2 and a Roland XP-80. I mostly use Lounge Lizard, VB3, Hybrid, Repro-1, IK Philharmonik, Amplitube SVX and Jamstix plugins.
Because the above pianos and organ plugins sound so fantastic I’ve been practicing rock keyboard parts more and decided to figure how to use the plugins live. Cantabile was the perfect choice. I’m trying to keep it simple and inexpensive until I play out more. Not sure how ill advised it is but I’m happy I can use ASIO4All with the laptop’s soundcard and just my MidiSport for now (and can put off purchasing the Scarlett 2i4 I’ve picked out).
I’m using an eight year old Dell Vostro 1520 2.6Ghz core 2 duo, 8GB RAM and 250 Evo SSD laptop running Win10 x64.
I think now it is ready for me to use,
with a new rack power supply on the back it is much better to organize my power adapter’s inside the Rack.
Also new 2xHDMI,3xUSB and 1Network connection easy to reach on the back.
For Cooling their are 2Fans:
1directly in the lower drawer above the surface
(5V Usb Powered/ from an old Netbookcoolingpad)
and a second one on the side in the midlle of the rack
(adjustable on the Frontpanel)
…so Outside the Rack their is only an IPad mini connected with rtp-MIDI per cable.
For me this is a good solution because I can open the drawer and take my surface with me to the livingroom…
(I am only a hobby musician / to use it on stage i would take a mini PC and fix it inside)
). It went very well, and well received.
)