Brithor Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Hello guys! I was wondering if someone of you could help me, seeing as I don't have much experience in these matters. I own a Yamaha P Series keyboard and I was looking for a way to connect it to a laptop (so to use instrument patches and such) to play it live with no latency (if that's even possible). I've been looking at some Audio Cards like Alesis IO/2 or the M-Audio Fast Track Pro but I'm not sure they would provide the results I'm looking for... Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanthos Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 No latency is impossible. Small latency isn't noticeable: most people don't start noticing latency until it's between 10-20 ms or higher. You will want a good audio interface; assuming your computer's not horrible, that's all you'll need. MIDI data is very low latency and your computer's USB port won't add anything noticeable, so getting the data to your virtual instrument won't be the issue. What will matter is how CPU-intensive the virtual instrument is (if you're waiting for it to stream samples from your hard drive, that adds latency), as well as the latency that your audio interface will add. I use my laptop strictly for live performance, along with two keyboards. I use a host program called Forte that's built for live performance, and I load it up with a bunch of Native Instruments products (Kontakt, Absynth, Massive, FM8, B4-II, Pro-53, a couple Guitar Rig instances for effects), plus a number of other synths (OP-X, Stringer, Sylenth, Synth1, Ultra Analog VA-1, Lounge Lizard, and Zebra). I have a lightweight orchestra loaded in Kontakt, a couple pipe organs, a couple choirs, and some samples; 200-300 MB worth of stuff. Obviously, trying to play all of those at the same time would overload my computer (as well as being pointless), but by muting all the instruments I'm not using (so they don't take up CPU), I get great performance when I use this in live situations. My laptop isn't a massive powerhouse either; it's a 2 GHz dual-core with 2 GB of RAM; not bad, but it wasn't state of the art when I bought it almost 3 years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brithor Posted December 17, 2009 Author Share Posted December 17, 2009 Thanks for the reply Kanthos, The thing is, my keyboard only has MIDI out, what's the best way to convert it to USB whilst keeping the latency at a minimum? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanthos Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 Make sure to get an audio interface that has MIDI in and out, and you're set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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