Troubleshooting

[bitflipper]

I started a fresh project last week, hand-planted a click track in the PRV to drive the TTS-1, and chose a Kontakt library to serve as the voice for a basic guide track. But when it came time to record said guide track, I couldn't record any MIDI.

I switched to a different keyboard controller to see if I'd screwed up something in my main synth's configuration (I have a special setup for live music and have to reconfigure for recording). Still no MIDI coming in. Checked my Sonar MIDI settings but couldn't see any problems there, which was expected given that I never change it. Tried a different soft synth just in case it was Kontakt being weird, but that wasn't it, either.

Could my trusty Focusrite be at fault? Geez, I hoped not. But this is my third interface, the previous two having died, so that was a possibility. But I needed to exhaust every other possibility before making that leap. I am running a beta version of Sonar, so as with a brand-new car anything's possible. But an older version yielded the same results, so it wasn't that, either.

So I did what I always do when I'm stumped: lit up a bowl and stared at the screen while drawing a MIDI flowchart in my mind. At each potential point of failure, I mentally drew a red X over each one that had already eliminated, until almost every possibility had been accounted for. Almost. The only thing left was the line drawn between the synth and the interface. "No way", I said to myself. MIDI cables don't break.

Well, it turns out that sometimes they do.

 

[craigb]

When I did IT consulting I remember doing the same thing (except for the bowl)!  Eliminating every possible option only to finally get to the point that the CAT6 cable had gone bad.

It's actually a good exercise for n00bs to help them really learn all the signal paths and how things work though! 🙂

[paulo]

Many moons ago I did some decorating for a relative... hallway, stairs and upstairs landing. When it was all done the light fittings and switches (white) looked very yellowed with age, so I took it upon myself to replace them all. I'm not an electrician by any means and the three way switching meant that it wasn't totally as straightforward as just replacing a regular one light/one switch set up, but I figured that I could trust myself enough to draw a diagram of which wire went where and replicate that, so I went out and bought 3 new switches/3 new light fittings and 3 new bulbs. I drew my diagrams and replaced everything with new. Looked much better, but one small snag... none of them worked. So I took each thing apart again checked all the connections were good, checked it v the diagram - all good - and then spent some time in head scratching mode. I checked and re-checked and it was all as I believed it should be. In the end I had to leave having not solved the problem. The next door neighbour was an electrician so I told her she would have to ask him to have a look when he came home and to call me if he needed any information on what I had done. I heard nothing that evening, so the next day I called and asked her if she spoke to the electrician. She said she did and he came in and had them all on within minutes. He never charged her anything, but said to just give me a message next time we spoke. The message was that I was very good at doing the wiring part, but not quite so good at checking if the bulbs actually worked ! 😀 I obviously should have thought of that, but they were all brand new, bought that day and all three were defective - what were the chances?

[Shane_B.]

I have to replace baseboard heaters a lot, as well as thermostats. It used to freak me out because the old ones are identical to the new ones, but they are wired differently than the wiring diagrams show that come with the new ones.

240vac is supposed to go to the thermostat, then when it kicks on, it sends it to the heater. These are wired so there's always 120vac at the heater, and at the thermostat, fed by both sides of the 240vac breaker. When the thermostat kicks on it completes the circuit and 240vac flows. That seems so dangerous to me but I'm not a "licensed" electrician so I really don't know.

I had one that was flat out wired wrong. No matter what the thermostat was set to it was always on full. The tenant said it was always that way and asked if I could fix it. Trying to figure out how someone wired an apartment complex 43 years ago is very stressfull, and you dont know what someone else did over the years to try and fix it. I kept thinking I'm going to burn the place down. I eventually figured it out but it was not fun. There were two small heaters on one circuit and half the power came in to one thermostat and split off to another thermostat, and like the others I mentioned, the other half went to each heater to make a loop. They got the wires mixed up at the thermostat and it was acting like an on/off switch.

[craigb]

8 hours ago, paulo said:

Many moons ago I did some decorating for a relative... hallway, stairs and upstairs landing. When it was all done the light fittings and switches (white) looked very yellowed with age, so I took it upon myself to replace them all. I'm not an electrician by any means and the three way switching meant that it wasn't totally as straightforward as just replacing a regular one light/one switch set up, but I figured that I could trust myself enough to draw a diagram of which wire went where and replicate that, so I went out and bought 3 new switches/3 new light fittings and 3 new bulbs. I drew my diagrams and replaced everything with new. Looked much better, but one small snag... none of them worked. So I took each thing apart again checked all the connections were good, checked it v the diagram - all good - and then spent some time in head scratching mode. I checked and re-checked and it was all as I believed it should be. In the end I had to leave having not solved the problem. The next door neighbour was an electrician so I told her she would have to ask him to have a look when he came home and to call me if he needed any information on what I had done. I heard nothing that evening, so the next day I called and asked her if she spoke to the electrician. She said she did and he came in and had them all on within minutes. He never charged her anything, but said to just give me a message next time we spoke. The message was that I was very good at doing the wiring part, but not quite so good at checking if the bulbs actually worked ! 😀 I obviously should have thought of that, but they were all brand new, bought that day and all three were defective - what were the chances?

People are shocked at how bad of an electrician I am!

 

 

(Ok, I'm actually pretty good, but I like that joke so I couldn't resist... 😁)

[Bapu]

9 hours ago, craigb said:

People are shocked at how bad of an electrician I am!

 

 

(Ok, I'm actually pretty good, but I like that joke so I couldn't resist... 😁)

Redacted.

I see you said electrician.

[Tim Smith]

It seems 3 way switches should be easy to install or replace, but I sort of found out the hard way it isn't always that straight forward.  In addition I was repacing regular switches with smart switches that used wifi and they are larger than the other switches. I still don't know how I managed to stuff that wiring and those swtches into that cavity and even make it look normal from the outside. No more puns. Craig has me covered

I have been 'popped' several times. It really gets your attention.

On 2/11/2024 at 1:49 PM, bitflipper said:

I started a fresh project last week, hand-planted a click track in the PRV to drive the TTS-1, and chose a Kontakt library to serve as the voice for a basic guide track. But when it came time to record said guide track, I couldn't record any MIDI.

I switched to a different keyboard controller to see if I'd screwed up something in my main synth's configuration (I have a special setup for live music and have to reconfigure for recording). Still no MIDI coming in. Checked my Sonar MIDI settings but couldn't see any problems there, which was expected given that I never change it. Tried a different soft synth just in case it was Kontakt being weird, but that wasn't it, either.

Could my trusty Focusrite be at fault? Geez, I hoped not. But this is my third interface, the previous two having died, so that was a possibility. But I needed to exhaust every other possibility before making that leap. I am running a beta version of Sonar, so as with a brand-new car anything's possible. But an older version yielded the same results, so it wasn't that, either.

So I did what I always do when I'm stumped: lit up a bowl and stared at the screen while drawing a MIDI flowchart in my mind. At each potential point of failure, I mentally drew a red X over each one that had already eliminated, until almost every possibility had been accounted for. Almost. The only thing left was the line drawn between the synth and the interface. "No way", I said to myself. MIDI cables don't break.

Well, it turns out that sometimes they do.

 

So it was something simple. Go figure.  I have had a few midi cables go bad. 

I might need to take notes from you or look up some of your info as I'm maybe preparing to play live again running a DAW and a midi synth controller playing Omnisphere. Omnisphere is a big program but the patches are light. Running my old i7 quad core lappy.

[bitflipper]

I used Omnisphere on a laptop for a few months, as well as VB3. It didn't work out as well as I'd imagined it would and I eventually gave up on the idea.

The first issue I ran into was getting audio out of the laptop. I did not want to complicate the setup by adding an external interface, so that meant taking output from the headphone jack. I wasn't concerned that the audio might be less pristine than from a proper interface - it's live, after all. The biggest issue was that the connection was unreliable or intermittent, with the cable often falling out due to the weight of the adapter, requiring that it be taped down.

Second issue was where to situate the laptop. At the time I was using two or three keyboards, in an L shape rather than stacked. I also ran sound, so that meant a mixer had to be situated next to me. Add a monitor on a stand (I can't hear floor monitors due to the keys blocking them) and now I'm taking up more stage space than even the drummer. There really wasn't anyplace to set the laptop where it was easily reachable and physically secure. That latter concern came to light when the little table I was using fell over and the laptop went crashing to the floor.

Then I realized that Windows is just not friendly to real-time applications. At one point, it wanted to perform an update, so I had to stop everything and tell it "not now". Fortunately, that happened during sound check and not mid-performance. Because my laptop also served other purposes, I had not stripped it down to bare essentials. It still had antivirus running, for example. If I forgot to disable the network, it would interrupt me with messages that it couldn't download email or couldn't reconnect drives. I would not trust a laptop to be a critical component. It's also very clumsy to use a touchpad to select patches on a soft synth. A mouse is even worse. You really need a separate programmable MIDI controller, one more thing you have to figure out where to put. 

Another minor, but unanticipated issue is that when audiences see a computer on stage they assume you're playing to backing tracks. We don't do that. I will never, ever do that. I want them to know that everything they hear is being created in real time.

What ultimately pushed me to abandon the idea was the extra setup time it added. I already had multiple instruments, pedal effects, stereo keyboard amplification and a PA system to set up. It took me over an hour. More if it was a challenging space, e.g. a corner or small area. Forget 15-minute turnarounds in a festival setting.

Nowadays I've trimmed my gear back quite a bit - two keyboards, stacked, no external fx, no separate amplification. Setup time is now 30-40 minutes. I still require a lot of space compared to, say, a bass player. But it's do-able, even in cramped spaces.

As far as special MIDI concerns, my first challenge came when I wanted to use a single sustain pedal for both keyboards. At first, I tried making a Y cable, but that never worked right. The solution was to pass CC64 events (and only CC64) from one keyboard to the other. The second challenge was switching between layering the two keyboards versus playing them independently. Fortunately, one of the keyboards provides a fairly easy way to do both, so it became my master device even though it was my secondary instrument. The third challenge was controlling a vocal effect via MIDI from a keyboard, which appears to be impossible due to the lack of MIDI options within the effect, e.g. no way to disable troublesome CC events. Every time I'd switch the Leslie speed, the effect treated it like a patch change. I'm still looking for a solution to that issue that doesn't involve more devices (you can buy an inline MIDI filter, for example). In the same vein, you also have to make sure that your laptop-hosted soft synths are configured to ignore patch change events unless you have a separate keyboard dedicated to soft synths.

None of this is relevant if computer-based synths are your whole show. You could get a rack-mounted computer and use a single inexpensive MIDI controller. Total cost would be a little less than a high-end synth. But even then I'd want a spare laptop along.

Bottom line: for live performance you want the simplest, cleanest, most reliable configuration that gets the job done. Using a computer complicates things.

[57Gregy]

Trouble. She a ......

[Shane_B.]

20 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

I was repacing regular switches with smart switches that used wifi and they are larger than the other switches. I still don't know how I managed to stuff that wiring and those swtches into that cavity and even make it look normal from the outside.

I love all those wifi gadgets. I was slowly converting my house over to wifi control. All of my outside lights, ceiling fans, heated floors in the bathroom, cameras, heat/ac, even the electric fireplace I put in our bedroom, even my Lionel train was wifi controlled. You could control the heat, color, brightness on the fireplace. It's really amazing what you can do with these gadgets now.

One thing I learned about all this wifi stuff is, all the apps are the same. I had one app controlling everything even though some of the stuff was different brands. For the inside outlets I used the plug in wifi adapters.

They were great, especially at Christmas. I used weatherproof ones for outside.

I set everything inside and out to come on 15 minutes before dusk. The wifi followed sunset and sunrise via the internet. Inside was set to go off at 11pm, outside set to go off at 15 minutes before dawn.

I hear ya about getting them to fit in the box. This pic is the worst one I ran in to. It originally had a 2 gang box. I had to cut out the drywall and install a 3 gang. I tidied up the wires and tapes them before I stuffed it all in. I also didn't have a big enough nut for the ground and I had to run to Lowe's and get a box of them.

Edited February 15 by Shane_B.

[Tim Smith]

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

I used Omnisphere on a laptop for a few months, as well as VB3. It didn't work out as well as I'd imagined it would and I eventually gave up on the idea.

I hate to give up Omnisphere because there are some unique one of a kind sounds in it I haven't found anywhere else, some of them specifically for solos, so they stick out. If I was only planning basic keys sounds I guess it wouldn't be as much of a concern. If I give it up I feel my performance sound will hurt. The house system runs in stereo so that could be a killer sound live. 

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

The first issue I ran into was getting audio out of the laptop. I did not want to complicate the setup by adding an external interface, so that meant taking output from the headphone jack. I wasn't concerned that the audio might be less pristine than from a proper interface - it's live, after all. The biggest issue was that the connection was unreliable or intermittent, with the cable often falling out due to the weight of the adapter, requiring that it be taped down.

I probably can't do that  because of playing through a DAW and latency. I have a secondary Focusrite I plan to maybe use. You're right though. It's a pain.I can't tell you how many times either myself or someone else stepped on the audio jack and pulled it out.

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Second issue was where to situate the laptop.

I've got a little folding table maybe 18 x 24 and plastic,  Probably need velcro in case it gets bumped.

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Then I realized that Windows is just not friendly to real-time applications.

I agree macs are probably better for this. 

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

You really need a separate programmable MIDI controller, one more thing you have to figure out where to put. 

I think for me this might be the answer. I have Ableton. Apparently you don't need a computer as you can load projects into it. I would be playing to backing tracks with live instruments. I have seen backing tracks done well and was impressed with it. I need to be able to toggle and start songs. If they are Ableton projects I just put them into PUSH. There might be a caveat though as I'm not sure it just plays through songs as opposed to individual chunks of audio. In some cases it would be cool to play a verse or chorus again, or add another element and I know it does that. It's also an interface, but I need to play my synths live using my controller with it. Still checking this thing out.

For monitoring , I seen THIS  used by a professional touring act as a reference monitor, so I'm considering something like this . It sits high enough to hear and is bottom heavy. This would be maybe no more tha 5-6' away.

20 hours ago, bitflipper said:

As far as special MIDI concerns, my first challenge came when I wanted to use a single sustain pedal for both keyboards. At first, I tried making a Y cable, but that never worked right. The solution was to pass CC64 events (and only CC64) from one keyboard to the other. The second challenge was switching between layering the two keyboards versus playing them independently. Fortunately, one of the keyboards provides a fairly easy way to do both, so it became my master device even though it was my secondary instrument. The third challenge was controlling a vocal effect via MIDI from a keyboard, which appears to be impossible due to the lack of MIDI options within the effect, e.g. no way to disable troublesome CC events. Every time I'd switch the Leslie speed, the effect treated it like a patch change. I'm still looking for a solution to that issue that doesn't involve more devices (you can buy an inline MIDI filter, for example). In the same vein, you also have to make sure that your laptop-hosted soft synths are configured to ignore patch change events unless you have a separate keyboard dedicated to soft synths.

Yikes that looks scary. I am hoping to use one controller and have my synths changed up as the programs run. Easier said than done.  If using Omnisphere, I would need those commands for each sound and would need to have a computer booted on that instrument ready to play. Sounds easy in the studio. Probably not so much live. IF I could get that into the Push it would be great, but might be asking a lot. Alternately I could use substandard sounds on one of my stand alone keyboards. I don't really like that idea. plus it's another audio feed to route and mix.

My setup is going to be computer based ( or PUSH) but I want to play synths and guitars. Sometimes it seems like trying to juggle with three arms. I have Guitar rig 7 which I love and it would save dragging amps and efx to a show. I will certainly need to submix and route the main feed to the house. Doesn't sound simple any more does it? 

I am evolving wih this as I go and trying not to go broke in the process. I think I would rather run a show on PUSH than a lappy. 

 

 

[Byron Dickens]

On 2/13/2024 at 1:58 PM, paulo said:

The message was that I was very good at doing the wiring part, but not quite so good at checking if the bulbs actually worked ! 😀 I obviously should have thought of that, but they were all brand new, bought that day and all three were defective - what were the chances?

I learned a long time ago that "new" stands for "never ever worked."

[Tim Smith]

4 hours ago, Shane_B. said:

I love all those wifi gadgets. I was slowly converting my house over to wifi control. All of my outside lights, ceiling fans, heated floors in the bathroom, cameras, heat/ac, even the electric fireplace I put in our bedroom, even my Lionel train was wifi controlled. You could control the heat, color, brightness on the fireplace. It's really amazing what you can do with these gadgets now.

One thing I learned about all this wifi stuff is, all the apps are the same. I had one app controlling everything even though some of the stuff was different brands. For the inside outlets I used the plug in wifi adapters.

They were great, especially at Christmas. I used weatherproof ones for outside.

I set everything inside and out to come on 15 minutes before dusk. The wifi followed sunset and sunrise via the internet. Inside was set to go off at 11pm, outside set to go off at 15 minutes before dawn.

I hear ya about getting them to fit in the box. This pic is the worst one I ran in to. It originally had a 2 gang box. I had to cut out the drywall and install a 3 gang. I tidied up the wires and tapes them before I stuffed it all in. I also didn't have a big enough nut for the ground and I had to run to Lowe's and get a box of them.

Looks like you are into it too. I have maybe three different brands of smart home products. Most of the main things in my house are all smart devices. There are some quirky things, like my ceiling fan is on an alexa voice controlled switch that turns the fan on or off, but to turn on the fan light you need the fan control. Since I don't use the light very much, it usually isn't a problem.

Everything else is great which is mostly lights and thermostat. If your wifi goes out though it's odd. Like when I drive our ICE car and get out of it and  forget to turn it off because I usually drive a Tesla and all you do is get out of it and everything shuts off lol. My wife has to remind me, uhhh...the car is still running. So when the wifi goes out, it's like Oh I guess I better find the light switch. Luckily the wifi doesn't often go out. We are all probably a little bit spoiled by technology.

[Xoo]

I've got two stories like this...

- Way back around the days of Cakewalk Pro Audio 6 or 7 (!), I was swearing at it for ages and ranting on the newsgroups about it.  Turns out I had a dodgy SCSI cable (remember them?) which was connected to the audio data drive, so no surprise the one application that hit that drive hard had problems.  Egg on face and many apologies (to the Bakers) ensued.

- The house I moved into 10 years ago always had issues with the phones, especially when trying to use the line for ADSL.  My dad - ex-telephone engineer - took a look and discovered that the wiring had been done in a ring, not a star, topology so it was amazing it ever worked.  He also looked at the aerial connection, and a junction box (splitter) had been put into the circuit.  Backwards.  So the impedance was all over the place.  And as for the (internal brick) wall that a metal/wire checker detects as filled with *something* almost everywhere so that we can't hammer a nail in safely...  Turns out the previous owner's brother-in-law was a bit of a dab hand at rewiring.  Allegedly.  We did wonder why the owners had said they'd had to get a separate 'phone line installed for their home office as the home internet wasn't reliable enough.  Maybe they shouldn't have gone to the brother-in-law to sort it out in the first place!

[bitflipper]

58 minutes ago, Tim Smith said:

I've got a little folding table maybe 18 x 24 and plastic,  Probably need velcro in case it gets bumped.

I made the mistake of starting with a folding tripod-style table (made by Samson, iirc) because it was compact. But it kept falling over. At one point it dumped my mixer onto the concrete floor in my garage and took out one of the mixer's channels. Another time it bent the power supply connector on another mixer, making it impossible to disconnect. 

So when I invested significant money in a compact digital mixer I was determined to never let anything bad happen to it. Here's what I'm using now. It's lightweight but quite solid and stable, height-adjustable and folds up flat for packing in the van. 

Those speakers look like a nice solution. I have used similar powered speakers, the ones made by Bose. I was amazed at how you could place them anywhere and not get feedback. Their only drawback was we couldn't get a whole lot of volume from them. But for low-volume gigs they sounded lovely. No distortion despite handling keyboards, guitar, drum machine and two vocals.

My monitor strategy these days is to run mine (QSC K8.2) at low volume but up close. It sits atop a speaker stand about 18" from my ear. Being a PA speaker, it's full bandwidth, which is important because I am often mixing the band from the stage and need to hear the full mix (keys, guitar, drums, bass and vox) in the same proportions that are coming out the mains. I only wish QSC made a 6" version that wouldn't block my view of the audience as much.

1 hour ago, Tim Smith said:

I hate to give up Omnisphere because there are some unique one of a kind sounds in it ... If I give it up I feel my performance sound will hurt. The house system runs in stereo so that could be a killer sound live. 

I totally understand. It provides a depth and texture that you don't normally hear in live performances, and therefore makes you stand out from the crowd.  It sounds great with my own PA, but unfortunately I often play venues with house systems that aren't stereo.  Or for that matter, anything close to high-fidelity. Pearls before swine. But if I was, say, playing in a house band in a quiet restaurant with quality reinforcement, then I'd absolutely revisit Omnisphere. As well as Keyscape, for its electric pianos, and the IKM Hammond, and probably Zebra2 for synth leads. Sadly, that's not my world.

1 hour ago, Tim Smith said:

I am evolving wih this as I go and trying not to go broke in the process. I think I would rather run a show on PUSH than a lappy. 

Well, your first mistake is "refusing to go broke in the process".   I gave up on that principle a while ago. That old washer/dryer makes grinding noises but still has a few years left, I can live with that leaky faucet a while longer, and my car is Italian and therefore built to last forever. 

I agree, using a controller that's designed for abuse by musicians is probably a much better idea than using a laptop. Assuming, of course, that it's rugged enough to be a key piece of your rig. Or cheap enough that you can afford a spare. I would definitely advise buying a nice padded hardshell case for it if it's going to travel at all.

When I think about it, it scares me how many individual devices I have that could halt a show should they fail. So I try not to think about that.

 

[57Gregy]

36 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

my car is Italian and therefore built to last forever.

😲 🤞

[AndyB01]

We're in the process of helping my lad renovate a 1980s semi he bought that needs a fair bit of TLC. On the advice of the electrician we decided to have a full rewire done and some of the crimes he has uncovered are absolutely unreal.

People have no idea what is lurking behind their sockets, light fittings, up in the loft or behind stud walls and plaster work - genuinely jaw-dropping bodges that are off the scale and positively lethal!

Andy

[Tim Smith]

18 hours ago, bitflipper said:

I made the mistake of starting with a folding tripod-style table (made by Samson, iirc) because it was compact. But it kept falling over. At one point it dumped my mixer onto the concrete floor in my garage and took out one of the mixer's channels. Another time it bent the power supply connector on another mixer, making it impossible to disconnect. 

Good to hear experiences of others here. The table I have isn't a made for music kind of thing, and maybe not ideal, but it has a solid sort of ironing board leg layout where it unfolds and has two long 'feet' at each end. Seems pretty stable but a little low to the floor. About 3ft. high. Lower center of gravity but need to bend to access computer if I use one. I like the table you linked much better. I would be standing. 

18 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Those speakers look like a nice solution. I have used similar powered speakers, the ones made by Bose. I was amazed at how you could place them anywhere and not get feedback. Their only drawback was we couldn't get a whole lot of volume from them. But for low-volume gigs they sounded lovely. No distortion despite handling keyboards, guitar, drum machine and two vocals.

As monitors they seem to work very well for them. I am seriously looking at it. Would be dual purpose as I could use it for a small 'gig'.

18 hours ago, bitflipper said:

My monitor strategy these days is to run mine (QSC K8.2) at low volume but up close. It sits atop a speaker stand about 18" from my ear. Being a PA speaker, it's full bandwidth, which is important because I am often mixing the band from the stage and need to hear the full mix (keys, guitar, drums, bass and vox) in the same proportions that are coming out the mains. I only wish QSC made a 6" version that wouldn't block my view of the audience as much.

Well I guess you would never have issue with not hearing the mix, that's for sure. The volume of your show must be high.

18 hours ago, bitflipper said:

I totally understand. It provides a depth and texture that you don't normally hear in live performances, and therefore makes you stand out from the crowd.  It sounds great with my own PA, but unfortunately I often play venues with house systems that aren't stereo.  Or for that matter, anything close to high-fidelity. Pearls before swine. But if I was, say, playing in a house band in a quiet restaurant with quality reinforcement, then I'd absolutely revisit Omnisphere. As well as Keyscape, for its electric pianos, and the IKM Hammond, and probably Zebra2 for synth leads. Sadly, that's not my world.

Alternatively I could freeze recorded tracks in Omnisphere and add them to a show using Ableton.  I had planned to solo though so it gets complicated. Here's a vid you might find interesting on backing tracks.

 

18 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Well, your first mistake is "refusing to go broke in the process".   I gave up on that principle a while ago. That old washer/dryer makes grinding noises but still has a few years left, I can live with that leaky faucet a while longer, and my car is Italian and therefore built to last forever. 

I agree, using a controller that's designed for abuse by musicians is probably a much better idea than using a laptop. Assuming, of course, that it's rugged enough to be a key piece of your rig. Or cheap enough that you can afford a spare. I would definitely advise buying a nice padded hardshell case for it if it's going to travel at all.

When I think about it, it scares me how many individual devices I have that could halt a show should they fail. So I try not to think about that.

A lot of musicians are only using a laptop, so I could save myself 2k on a PUSH 3. Push 2 used would be much less, but still, not sure if I really need it. Ableton can map to any midi controller for things like song start stop next song etc. Theoretically a song can be one long loop or it can be broken into segments and 'fired' off a controller. Some musicians who write their own tunes and play alone or with one other don't even use a click track if the have decent monitoring. Four drum stick counts in and they can follow the rest.  I would be tasking two things at once instrument and voice plus managing the tracks with some kind of a controller. One task would be better and I don't want a guitar part in a track I could be playing. I have the 4 channel looper too. In an unplugged set that could be very useful.

Edited February 16 by Tim Smith

[bitflipper]

3 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

The volume of your show must be high.

Actually, it's the opposite. Volume control has been the key to landing repeat gigs - bartenders and servers love us for that. We can get loud when necessary, e.g. outdoor stages, but it's all in the mains.

With every instrument running direct through the PA, I literally have a master volume control for the whole band. But what we hear on stage is consistently low-volume, the same volume we rehearse at. Electronic drums are what makes it all possible. The seeming overkill of using QSCs for monitoring is actually so that we hear a clean, full-spectrum representation of what's going out to the crowd.

Of course, my carefully-engineered scheme falls apart whenever we play venues that provide the PA and monitors. That, unfortunately, accounts for about 50% of our gigs. Those can be quite uncomfortable, especially when some tone-deaf FoH guy assumes 120dBSPL is just about right for a 200-cap room.

[57Gregy]

26 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

tone-deaf FoH guy

Redundancy abounds.