Electronic trio live - help me with the setup!!!

[vibralux]

Hi all

So it happened - I decided to go live with my album. I got an idea for a trio but I am on the green side for real life scenarios. So here is my ideas. Please give me some reality check.

1) So - I want a live drummer but without a standard acoustic kit - I want the band to look futuristic and minimial. I have a drumkat pad and the first problem I have is to what pair it with. I dont want drummer to play any vst s because of the latency and stability issues. So I narrowed it to two options - Roland sp 404 and Akai mpc 1000. I just want to throw some samples and phrases, assign them to drumkats pads and call it a day Which one would You choose? I had and mpc2500 before and I know its great - I am just not shure if it is not an overkill (even the 1000)

2) Mixer - I want all the stuff connected to a small mixer on stage and just give the stereo master to the audio guy in the clubs. I live in Poland and clubs here have a really shitty gear- so it is the safest way to get the gig together. Now - what mixer would You recommend for such a small band?
It will be - electronic drums (stereo), bass, two vocals - male and female and a synthesizer (stereo)
So I narrowed the search down to mackie vlz 1220 or yamaha mg series. The budget is an issue - I dont want to spend more than the vlz 1220 goes for.

3) Effects - I also want some simple effects for vocals - some delay, verb. Two separate fx would be enough. Any ideas?

4) MOnitoring - on stage the drummer will have a click from the sampler and will have headphones as he wont move so he does not need any special monitoring. But I am worried about monitoring for me and the girl vocalist/bassist. Any cheap, sensible options in this area? I was thinking about the inear stuff, but it gets very expensive,

5) Any other things I should consider with such a setup?

I would greatly appreciate any tips on the above.

Peace and Marry Christmas to all of You !!!!

[vibralux]

Damn - nobody wants to give it a shot? After many hours of researching
I came down to RME babyface, laptop with addictive drums and ZED 12FX mixer. Seems like a good core for such a small ensemble. Any comments of those two? Drummer wil be triggering the AD with DrumKat via babyface. As for FX I will use the ZED and RME so no need for extra FX box. Good idea?

[mcpepe]

Have you thought about a mixer with integrated FireWire? For example MAudio NRV10

[vibralux]

Dont wont firewire as it becomes obsolete (and my laptop does not have this port) My main goal is stability and I heard some horror stories with mackie fw mixers. Althoug have not heard about the maudio mixer. Will investigate. thanks

[Niallerrity]

You get what you pay for, the Yamaha mg series are good.

Something like the Peavey 16FX mixer is good quality are a realistic price, it's about 700 - 800 euro but it has 6 aux sends, good effects (2 can be used at a time) good parametric EQ. This would also eliminate the need for an external FX processor! It's rack mountable too.

The Mackie desks again are good but lack built in effects, I'd more recommend these for people who want a cheap solution to track at home.

In my experience there's always something small about low end desks that upsets me - usually not light on the PFL to indicate if it's on or off, or no VCA's, or maybe only one Aux send ETC.

But the Peavey comes pretty close to being a perfect console at that price point, just there's no light on the PFL which really pisses me off but you know a desk is good when all you can complain about is such trivial things. Then again some people will agree it's important to be able to see what’s selected easily in the dark.

For monitoring why not some active wedges? Like ALTOS? They’re about 300 a speaker but their active and quite good at the price point. If you want to try in ear monitors all we really stock is Sennheiser which are amazing but expensive, actually we have an LD system which I've heard good reports about (Never used them personally) but customers are happy, they go for about 200-250 including sender and receiver.

Don't worry about the whole 'obsolete' issue because by the time firewire or USB is gone you'll have already upgraded again. Other things to be aware of is effects on guitars/bass/vox etc but I’m sure you have pedals for what you require. Also it's best to get a proper engineer on tour with you, especially if you are relying on the desk on stage to sum the instruments - the house engineer probably won’t go out of his way to get you a good sound if all your giving him is a summed L & R because if you have a problem with levels on stage it's going to be impossible to fix FOH (what you hear on stage is not what the crowed hears)

[vibralux]

Thanks a lot - thats some serious advice here v. Yeah - I am already searching for a soundman - all my friends who tour professionally are telling me that I am gone without one.