Smartphone live monitoring

[Glacierise]

Hi guys,

I'm building a live rig for my band based on Reaper in OS X - I got a 2015 MacBook pro at a bargain.
All is working great with the help of the great Reaper community - I've set up backing tracks, automated patch changes for our guitars, streaming lyrics to the vocalists' phones using the web interface, fantastic stuff.

Now what I really need is to send a synth line to the vocalists' in ear headphones, to help them in singing their stuff correctly. In ear monitoring gear is expensive and logistically heavy, so I was hoping for a solution similar to the Reaper web interface, but with audio streaming at reasonable latencies. Sounds like something that would be popular, but I'm not finding much on the topic. Myxyr sounds great - https://www.myxyr.com/en/ but its casting VST is not available on OS X. I will try the plugwire route to get it to work on OS X soon.

Any other ideas? Would be great to hear what people have tried, what works well and what doesn't - I'm new to this.

Thanks!

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by Glacierise

I've set up backing tracks, automated patch changes

Great !

There is another thread in the "Tips and tricks" forum -> http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=190797 about both starting backing tracks and changing patches using LiveConfigs. I could not help regarding backing tracks, as I never did do something like this. Maybe you would be inclined to chime in there and report your findings.

Thanks a lot,
-Michael

[mschnell]

Regarding the Monitoring I am rather doubtful about streaming audio via Wireless Lan. WLan is very easily disturbed and in that case will do lots of retransmissions before the information is completely received. That is why IMHO low latency transmission via WLan will not work.

-Michael

[Glacierise]

Originally Posted by mschnell

Regarding the Monitoring I am rather doubtful about streaming audio via Wireless Lan. WLan is very easily disturbed and in that case will do lots of retransmissions before the information is completely received. That is why IMHO low latency transmission via WLan will not work.

-Michael

That's great to know. I'll look at another route. I think I'll need about 7 outputs on my interface - two guitars, click for the drummer, stereo to PA and two for the singers. Not many interfaces with that many outputs though, I'm looking around. Does this sound like a good idea or I'm going the wrong direction? Alternatively, I could buy another Scarlet 2i4 to plug into the other USB port of my Macbook Pro, and I'll have 8 outputs?

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by Glacierise

I could buy another Scarlet 2i4 to plug into the other USB port of my Macbook Pro, and I'll have 8 outputs?

In Windows/ASIO, some interfaces can be aggregated, some can't. It depends on the driver and on the hardware providing some means of clock-synchronizing. I can't comment regarding Mac, but I suppose the MAC OS does aggregating by re-sampling, out of the box.

-Michael

[Glacierise]

Originally Posted by mschnell

In Windows/ASIO, some interfaces can be aggregated, some can't. It depends on the driver and on the hardware providing some means of clock-synchronizing. I can't comment regarding Mac, but I suppose the MAC OS does aggregating by re-sampling, out of the box.

-Michael

Ok, that's another thing I haven't considered due to inexperience, they'll need to sync. There's a cheap way to try that, I gave my old scarlett 2i2 to our other guitar player, I'll test it, thanks!

[uncleswede]

Originally Posted by Glacierise

That's great to know. I'll look at another route. I think I'll need about 7 outputs on my interface - two guitars, click for the drummer, stereo to PA and two for the singers. Not many interfaces with that many outputs though, I'm looking around. Does this sound like a good idea or I'm going the wrong direction? Alternatively, I could buy another Scarlet 2i4 to plug into the other USB port of my Macbook Pro, and I'll have 8 outputs?

Look at the behringer xr18 stage box...

16 combo inputs, 2 Aux in, 8 outputs (6 aux, 2 main), good preamps (Mid as), 18x18 USB daw interface (low latency), on board comps, eq, FX plus ethernet/WLAN which means you can use smartphones to control individual monitor mixes on stage.

All for £500 :-)

We've been using the xr18 in our seven piece band for a while now and it's been flawless. The only recommended addition is a 5ghz wireless router to give reliable/secure connectivity at crowded gigs and a long cat5 cable (ours is 40m) to run to a FOH laptop to run the main mix (also a backup for monitor mixes if the wifi screws up, which it never has for us, as yet anyway)

[Glacierise]

Originally Posted by uncleswede

Look at the behringer xr18 stage box...

16 combo inputs, 2 Aux in, 8 outputs (6 aux, 2 main), good preamps (Mid as), 18x18 USB daw interface (low latency), on board comps, eq, FX plus ethernet/WLAN which means you can use smartphones to control individual monitor mixes on stage.

All for £500 :-)

We've been using the xr18 in our seven piece band for a while now and it's been flawless. The only recommended addition is a 5ghz wireless router to give reliable/secure connectivity at crowded gigs and a long cat5 cable (ours is 40m) to run to a FOH laptop to run the main mix (also a backup for monitor mixes if the wifi screws up, which it never has for us, as yet anyway)

Thanks, I'll check it out!

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by uncleswede

Look at the behringer xr18 stage box...

I also use that one very happily
-Michael

[serr]

Originally Posted by uncleswede

The only recommended addition is a 5ghz wireless router to give reliable/secure connectivity at crowded gigs and a long cat5 cable (ours is 40m) to run to a FOH laptop to run the main mix (also a backup for monitor mixes if the wifi screws up, which it never has for us, as yet anyway)

I was under the impression that 2.4ghz was more robust with a larger range.
Is that no longer the case?

I picked up a 50' powered USB extender cable years ago for emergency use to connect the MIDI controllers directly if I ran into an interference problem. Still never used it.

I have run into interference issues a few times. Battling wi-fi with a POS system I suspect (that's Point Of Sale, not...). I've never had both systems go down at once (remote desktop on one wi-fi channel and USB MIDI controllers on a 2nd).

[Glacierise]

Originally Posted by mschnell

Great !

There is another thread in the "Tips and tricks" forum -> http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=190797 about both starting backing tracks and changing patches using LiveConfigs. I could not help regarding backing tracks, as I never did do something like this. Maybe you would be inclined to chime in there and report your findings.

Thanks a lot,
-Michael

Well, my pre-production is in Reaper already, so it's quite natural to simply configure the project file for live use. The backing tracks stay put, the live performed ones get muted originals and armed for performance.All it takes is a few snapshots with different input routings and some custom actions to switch them on marker positions. Add some layout changes for a marker action at the end of the track which switches the display to a big tuner and mutes guitars. All songs in the set are loaded using the SWS project loader. The project selector from SWS is used to chose the next track, and a marker action at the start of the track switches to live layout and loads the right snapshot. I'll open up a new topic about all that, I've had a lot of fun with it! Thanks for the help!

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by Glacierise

SWS project loader. The project selector from SWS is used to chose the next track, and a marker action at the start of the track switches to live layout and loads the right snapshot. I'll open up a new topic about all that, I've had a lot of fun with it! Thanks for the help!

I did not think that switching projects in whatever way would be compatible with using LiveConfigs and realtime-played VSTs. I expressed this opinion in the other thread, but maybe I was wrong.

Looking forward to your new topic on that !

If appropriate I will add this to the LiveConfigs documentation.

-Michael

[Glacierise]

Originally Posted by mschnell

I did not think that switching projects in whatever way would be compatible with using LiveConfigs and realtime-played VSTs. I expressed this opinion in the other thread, but maybe I was wrong.

Looking forward to your new topic on that !

If appropriate I will add this to the LiveConfigs documentation.

-Michael

My one gripe with liveConfigs would be that only one action is performed per event. Of course, building custom actions can envelop more stuff and it's nice, just not as visual as having an action list there in the liveConfigs menu. Other than that' it's cool. I'll do a writeup soon!