Who uses Cantabile live (and no synth hardware)

[godly]

Thx for the kind help !
I tried a setup on my newly installed w7 x64 2Gb ram 2.1 dual core laptop (what a list )
I know it's not that powerfull but hope to get it running anyway for 1 or 2 plugs at a time I have set w7 to minimum performance and memory usage. I mainly want to use it as extra sound module.

I was refering to viewing the plugin GUI when playing one. It seems I always need to click that small button to see it? (which won't be handy in live situations?)

Also would it be intresting to have the playing preset in BIIIGGG font, so I can see it from miles away.
Would this be possible? Or would there exist an other vst for that? lol

[pinkcanaru]

Yes, you have to press the edit button to see a GUI but you can have one plugin constantly available for viewing in the Plugin view window.
That's where I keep my guitar tuner.
It is recalled with the session.

I guess you could name a subession with useful info. Put it in a setlist. Open the Status window. That's a BIG font.

[godly]

Subsession big font? That's a biggg workaround for something basic, no?

[TiUser]

With VST windows I remember somewhat hidden options to open separate VST windows on load and keep them on top. You can find these options in the context menu of the title bar of Cantabiles plugin windows.

[pinkcanaru]

Subsession big font? That's a biggg workaround for something basic, no?

Not really.
Have you seen the Status window? It exists for exactly the reason you want. BIG info in a font bigger than any DAW I have ever seen.
The subession name is shown BIG as long as it is in a setlist.


Not big enough?

[pinkcanaru]

And using the plugin panel, a session can be loaded to display as shown below:



Unfortunately, it's only one plugin in that panel per session. Window layout memories are needed!! But in your case I think you said you were only using one or two plugins anyway.
But, depending upon the type of plugins you're using, it could be practical to have your setlist call up different sessions in which that panel could have the plugin of choice for that song. The use of Setlists is a basic operational function of Cantabile and it is very powerful.
Those are the workarounds for Cantabile as it stands right now.
The only other approach one could conceivably employ would be something like Quickeys, where you can build macros to call anything onto the screen with key commands.

http://startly.com/products/quickeys/windows/3/

[pinkcanaru]

And TiUSer is right about the plugins loading automatically.
I think this used to be more accessible, but the way it works for me is that for any open plugin hit alt enter and the plugin menu bar is hidden. All you see is the GUI. Right click at the top of the plugin and a menu drops down in which you can select 'Open on Load' and 'Always on Top'.

I'm just using 'Open on Load' and Cantabile recalls like this:


I've tested this between several sessions and it works - with one caveat.
ANY plugin which has been instructed to load automatically will load.
I think the basic instructions are in Cantibile. I'm sure that this kind of feature will be fleshed out in the long awaited V3.0

[Tony Ostinato]

ive been using a laptop live onstage with a yamaha wx5 windsynth live in various bands for like 6 years or so, heres my current setup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5ar_3nGx2w

sometimes i run cantabile at the same time, or ableton, and often i run winamp during breaks.

i assign cantabile to use asio and i have reaper using wdm.

[pinkcanaru]

I love what you've done Tony. Just exceptional work and vision.
I can imagine that a hybrid drive or SSD would improve things even more on your setup!

And thanks for the iobit gamebooster heads up!!!

[godly]

And TiUSer is right about the plugins loading automatically.
I think this used to be more accessible, but the way it works for me is that for any open plugin hit alt enter and the plugin menu bar is hidden. All you see is the GUI. Right click at the top of the plugin and a menu drops down in which you can select 'Open on Load' and 'Always on Top'.

I'm just using 'Open on Load' and Cantabile recalls like this:


I've tested this between several sessions and it works - with one caveat.
ANY plugin which has been instructed to load automatically will load.
I think the basic instructions are in Cantibile. I'm sure that this kind of feature will be fleshed out in the long awaited V3.0

wow great ! yes, this is what I need, I'll check it out.

[Tony Ostinato]

I love what you've done Tony. Just exceptional work and vision.
I can imagine that a hybrid drive or SSD would improve things even more on your setup!

And thanks for the iobit gamebooster heads up!!!

thanks!!

last night was my first night with the ram drive, a samsung 500g 840 series, not the pro. backed up with redo backup and changed drives and then restored the redo backup image to the ram drive and bang, done.

and yeah, its really nice. once in awhile we will get girls, or guys, coming up onstange and dancing like crazy and jumping up and down on these flexy acme stages and occasionally i could hear the old hard drive stutter a bit as the laptop bounced up and down on its stand. can't have that.

i installed a 4 gig stick to bring it to 8 gig but i was getting screen corruption (looked like an analog tv with bad reception) and crashes. people said i could get away with cheap ram but pulling that stick out fixed it.

so maybe ill try a better brand name stick of ram.

yeah, that iobit gamebooster makes a difference. well worth trying.

[pinkcanaru]

I had a major issue with that stuttering on live gigs and finally disabled Lenovo's airbag protection. WAY too sensitive even at the lowest settings. That cured it - but with SSD it's no issue. I'm using one of those hybrid drives which has really sped things up but not taken the plunge into full SSD. I carry two backup drives and actually practiced swapping out the drives against the clock LOL!!

I grabbed the Razer_Game_Booster off the iobit site. Not the premium version.
Did I get the right thing. It installed some kind of Microsoft framework and I just hit the boost performance button. I'm afraid things look worse even after an uninstall.
I may restore the drive and start again. Did you do anything specific in there?

[Tony Ostinato]

yeah i uninstalled all the lenovo stuff right off when i got it.

its been over a year since i installed gamebooster so i don't recall, maybe it was .net framework.

hasnt been any trouble so far.

beyond the defaults i have gamebooster turning off as much as i can, i made a specific profile for reaper and its been trial and error as far as what i can shut off.

[godly]

How do you guys do it with Anti-virus? Do you disable it on live gigs? Or just leave it on and set it to no scanning etc?

I just found an other good tutorial how to get the best out of Windows and speed up !
http://www.pcworld.com/article/218323/s ... _down.html

I installed some RAM cleaner, I hope this also does a good job freeing up memory.
Most of those software are no good, but this article says Memcleaner works great.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-fr ... imizer.htm
We'll see.

[TiUser]

See my other reply...

Basically it's best to have a dedicated PC with nothing but a plain Windows on it (no OEM version either).

No internet, no virus scanners, no firewalls, nothing that is not needed to make music!

No power saving options, no systems stuff like file indexing services...

Still this is no guarantee to get all cpu for audio... but things get more stable.