Consistent sound throughout live performances

[loujudson]

The only dependable way is to have your own experienced and dedicated FoH mix person. Maybe try to give careful notes to the sound guy and make time for rehearsals.

Or maybe mix it yourself on stage and give a feed to the house, but that won't make you very popular with venue cats unless you do a really good job.
I'm a live sound mixer and nobody tries to do this, they trust me to make it all sound good - sometimes I get notes on what to do per song, but they can't expect much without rehersals. Best is to make your instruments sound the way you want them from the start.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

In my experience a lot of synth patches are all over the place when it comes to level. So I suspect that your first task would be to get the songs together, then check the average volume level for each song and the peak level for each song, and try to get them somewhat consistent. Then what you feed FOH won't vary by much, except possibly for the vocals. If your levels are reasonably consistent, you shouldn't have any problems with FOH.

Obviously if you need echos and verbs, electric or acoustic percussion and such, it is your responsibility to provide that.

[zvukofor]

The real answer is: get your own sound/mixing engineer. There's no other easy and good way. Either you should learn all these things by yourself, or go get a guy who already have sound engineering skills.

[loujudson]

Originally Posted by zvukofor

The real answer is: get your own sound/mixing engineer. There's no other easy and good way. Either you should learn all these things by yourself, or go get a guy who already have sound engineering skills.

Absolutely! Thanks for not letting me be a lone voice...

Lou

[piper]

I do sound for my wife's band. They're all acoustic, but the same principals apply.

For songs that need more reverb on vocals, I add more reverb. Songs that need more fiddle I add give it more. Some songs need more on the solos, less on the chorus, or whatever. Wife recently got a boost pedal, so now she can handle the generic "loud/soft" bit on her end.

You could get pedals for your vocal reverb and so forth.

There's a tradeoff. The more stuff you put on your side of the mixer, the more complicated your performance gets, and the more opportunities you have to mess up. Also the more stuff you have that can stop working mid set. On the other hand, the more you rely on the sound man, the more your set is in his hands. The real downside is that you can't hear FOH, so you won't even know.

[loujudson]

Piper is right!

One band I worked with was a tribute band, Tom Petty or something - not what you are doing, but they had a mixer on stage that fed both thei in-ear mixes and the front of house with a splitter. Made things easy for both of us!

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by piper

There's a tradeoff. The more stuff you put on your side of the mixer, the more complicated your performance gets, and the more opportunities you have to mess up. Also the more stuff you have that can stop working mid set. On the other hand, the more you rely on the sound man, the more your set is in his hands......

Yup. I made my living as a live sound guy for a while, and trust is everything, and the ability to take over the technical end so that the performers can perform is a key aspect for many performers. Other performers want that control and can't give it up.

[theblue1]

I knew a dream pop band that used a lot of vocal effects in their live vocal sound and after a while they started just giving a vocal mix to the house mixers. It made things a lot smoother and them a lot less frustrated. The singer controlled his mix from the stage. It made a big improvement in their sound.

Originally Posted by loujudson

The only dependable way is to have your own experienced and dedicated FoH mix person. Maybe try to give careful notes to the sound guy and make time for rehearsals.

Or maybe mix it yourself on stage and give a feed to the house, but that won't make you very popular with venue cats unless you do a really good job.
I'm a live sound mixer and nobody tries to do this, they trust me to make it all sound good - sometimes I get notes on what to do per song, but they can't expect much without rehersals. Best is to make your instruments sound the way you want them from the start.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by theblue1

.... The singer controlled his mix from the stage. It made a big improvement in their sound.

How is that even possible? Standing behind the speakers, mixing for front of house? Any sound guy should be able to do a better job than that.

I was fortunate enough to get to mix Doc Severinsen and Xebron. Docs monitor guy took me up on stage and stood me beside Doc. Told me to listen to Docs monitor mix. Then he took me out to front of house and said, "Okay, make it sound like Docs monitor mix." I did, and I got to mix the show. Otherwise, he was going to send me a two channel mix of Docs monitor mix, of which I would have had no control. Great band, and I got to do what a good sound guy does... work with the band to make it better.

there are a lot of lazy sound guys out there, just as there are lazy guys everywhere. The simpler you make their job, the easier their day is. Many of them like it when you guys send them everything already mixed. they can relax and have a beer, and if your show sucks that is your problem. But a lot of us take pride in our work and want to make every act sound as good as possible, and we know how. A live show is dynamic (or it should be) and the abilities of the guy at the console can elevate a good show to a killer show.

[Nerdturd]

(ive never posted)

Im in a band that just started playing live and my setup is: 2 samplers, a synth, a drum machine, bunch of pedals, I do vocals, too. I've been sending all that into a mackie 1202vlz3 mixing it myself and adjusting the Aux Send/Returns in real time (I am constantly adjusting the parameters of everything else, too)
Everything on a big wide table

In the end I just send a 2channel to the sound person. I've listened to a recording of a show an it was okay, but definitely noticeable jostling of sounds' levels.

Who recommends a different way?
Advice?

[synthoid]

This is such a difficult problem.

For the folks who say that this is the same as mixing a conventional rock band or acoustic instruments: I don't think so. I think it's a much harder problem when there's a heavy use of synths and live electronic effects.

Radical patch/timbre changes from synths, and vocal effects that are being snapped on and off are really hard to control unless you know those things are coming in advance. Having your own FOH is great, assuming that he is so much on top of the music that he can manage a complicated mix like that live. You need lots of sends to the FOH if everything is going to be managed there. It's great if you run into a stage that has enough line-level sends to let you break everything out and send it to the FOH to be mixed there. If not, you have the added headache of figuring out how to get all those signals there.

But the main point is that even if you don't manage the mix from the stage, still if there is automation or semi-automation of some kind in your show, being controlled by on-stage computers or performers, then you can create some radical change-ups that are hard for the FOH to cope with.

I think this is half of the reason that so much 'live' electronic music has big portions that are premixed as backing tracks: it's just so doggoned hard to get to a decent level of balance and polish and control if you start with raw electronic sources and leave it all up to a live mixer.

Very tough problem. I favor doing a lot of the mixing using the band's own gear on stage, into a few stems (say, dry vox, wet vox, synth mix, drums, bass, whatever), and let the FOH balance those. The band has to work out in rehearsal getting those basic stems to play well with each other and get each one basically balanced and under control dynamically. That gives some kind of trade-off between too much flexibility (overwhelming the FOH with too much to take care of) or too little (making it impossible for the FOH to fix a bad balance).

hassle.

-synthoid

[subhertz]

I would suggest a digital mixer as the centrepoint of a variety of strategies/ compromises mentioned above .

Primarily to balance levels between different songs, with recallable snapshots allowing fine tuning and quick comparisons during rehearsals ; whether this is done by yourselves, you get a permanent soundman, or rent one for one session to set up the snapshots . But set the desk up so you can provide both a stereo mix and stems .

Then at the venues you can " play it by ear " ,whether you send previously balanced stems to their soundman , your soundman or you mix it from onstage , which would be an easier job because of the previous mix programming.

[Nerdturd]

Good thoughts
Thank you

[zvukofor]

Yes, it is good to have finished and polished songs, so there's no technical problems when you play live - inconsistent level and so on, but someone in a band should be a sound engineer for that.
I'm a sound engineer and i play live electronics in a band too, and we have no such problems, but i know a lot of electronic bands that do not have engineering skills or an engineer, and they have these problems.
When you making a material for performance you should make it as if you were recording an album. Use sequenced automation, calibrate levels on different patches and so on. It is much more complicated situation than of classic rock live bands, but even guitarists adjust their balances for rhythm-solo swiching.

[piper]

Originally Posted by synthoid

This is such a difficult problem.

For the folks who say that this is the same as mixing a conventional rock band or acoustic instruments: I don't think so. I think it's a much harder problem when there's a heavy use of synths and live electronic effects.

I don't think anyone said it was the same thing, just the same concept -- either the musicians /or/ the soundman is responsible for any given task. It's up to the musicians to figure out how much they want to control.

[valis]

Live shows have 2 things, stage monitoring duties (in-ear and on stage) and "FOH" aka the mix sent to the 'mains' for the audience. In each case you have both normal 'mixing' duties and the technical aspects (and roadie aspects) of actually getting the gear setup, connected & working properly.

Starting with 'monitoring'...while it's true that musicians/performers are often (usually even, if given a chance to learn how) capable of handling their own MONITOR mixes using some of the newer solutions built SPECIFICALLY for artist-monitoring out there, it's still helpful to have a person dedicated to helping with on-stage mixing. This is because stage "monitoring" involves both the OPERATIONAL levels *and* the technical aspects of insuring signals are properly routed, cabling is intact and operational and gear is properly connected. Only the 'operational levels' portion is accounted for by the (often Cat-5 based) 'personal monitoring' solutions out there, having a sound guy handling monitoring duties is still useful (if the budget allows) to suss out the technical issues and have things operating at proper levels into the 'personal monitoring mixers' to begin with. For someone just hooking up a stereo pair to perform electronic music this may not be as necessary during the show, so it may be the 'sound guy' running FOH can help get things hooked up here then run back to his main board to run the sound.

Focusing now on FOH, the mix engineer here can help not only insure things are properly routed and connected again, but also insure that the mix TRANSLATES AS IT SHOULD FROM VENUE TO VENUE. Since he can hear the mix (in headphones, against a reference and) in the main system feeding the 'house', only this person (or persons) can account for getting it to sound 'right' in a given venue or soundspace. Having things 'premixed' or at least 'pre-engineered' as much as possible in electronic music, you're STILL going to need someone to make sure that the system is getting the levels it needs to each amp stage, crossovers are set properly and the overall mix is being eq's and levelled properly for the space you're operating in.

So if you're trying to get a LIVE ACT to sound consistent from venue to venue, it's important to have monitoring and sound engineers that are capable of getting things dialed in to sound the way you want.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by Bill@WelcomeHome

How is that even possible? Standing behind the speakers, mixing for front of house? Any sound guy should be able to do a better job than that.

I was fortunate enough to get to mix Doc Severinsen and Xebron. Docs monitor guy took me up on stage and stood me beside Doc. Told me to listen to Docs monitor mix. Then he took me out to front of house and said, "Okay, make it sound like Docs monitor mix." I did, and I got to mix the show. Otherwise, he was going to send me a two channel mix of Docs monitor mix, of which I would have had no control. Great band, and I got to do what a good sound guy does... work with the band to make it better.

there are a lot of lazy sound guys out there, just as there are lazy guys everywhere. The simpler you make their job, the easier their day is. Many of them like it when you guys send them everything already mixed. they can relax and have a beer, and if your show sucks that is your problem. But a lot of us take pride in our work and want to make every act sound as good as possible, and we know how. A live show is dynamic (or it should be) and the abilities of the guy at the console can elevate a good show to a killer show.

They were a trio. Think Cocteau Twins for sound. Their sound revolved around the use of massive amounts of FX on the guitar controlled by the guitar player and massive amounts of FX on the bass player's vocals.

They didn't have their own mixer and got tired of house guys hacking up their sound so, finally, in frustration, they started just doing it all themselves and handing the house guy a feed to send dry into the house mix. It made it a lot easier on everyone, since there was no way you could reasonably expect a house guy to run a bunch of dub style FX in the right place in the vocals.

[gmx750]

Thank you for all the quick replies !!
The band had a meeting yesterday, so that we could discuss some important decisions to make, regarding our future plans.
It all boiled down to two options:

- Have a sound technician / someone who has experience with mixing and preparing sound for live performance. this guy would help the band have a consistent sound by mixing studio material and trying to mix the live performance so that it sounds as close as possible to the polished version of the song.

- Concentrate our efforts and try to finish a set of compositions. create an album, mix it, master it and then go live with that polished version as a goal for our live performance. obviously that would also require a sound tech, but only on the FOH side.


but we still had some doubts...
- how would we have polished and studio-ized samples for our live performance? wouldn't we need access to the final DAW version of the song, so that we could extract the samples track by track? (instead of sampling the wav or mp3 or flac version of the song, which would not work as intended, given that a sampled sound will most probably be overlapped by another sound such as a hi-hat, snare or even vocals)

- how would we "treat" raw plugin sounds with are much harder (if not impossible) to sample? would we have the signal go through a multi-fx equipment and possibly a digital equalizer (allowing us to change EQ on the fly between songs and leaving the rest to the FOH) ?

Thank you very much for all the suggestions so far!
Regards,
GMX750

[DistortingJack]

I use a mac with Mainstage and an audio interface with DIs.
It works great; you do need to set the levels perfectly in advance, being careful of the fact different frequencies sound louder at different volumes and in different speakers.
I use 4 mono stems that the SE can peruse. We used to do stereo stuff but people complained of an "unfocussed" sound so we removed most reverbs, simplified the sounds and made everything mono. It sounds great now.

[synthoid]

Originally Posted by gmx750

but we still had some doubts...
- how would we have polished and studio-ized samples for our live performance? wouldn't we need access to the final DAW version of the song, so that we could extract the samples track by track? (instead of sampling the wav or mp3 or flac version of the song, which would not work as intended, given that a sampled sound will most probably be overlapped by another sound such as a hi-hat, snare or even vocals)

If you have access to the project itself, then you can bounce backing tracks down yourself. If not, you can ask the mix engineer to make stems for you of the main elements (e.g., a bg vox stem, maybe a synth stem, maybe percussion and fx stem, whatever). My experience using stems for backing tracks is that I always want to diddle with them after the fact, so I very much prefer to have access to the mixdown (DAW project) for preparing backing tracks. Sometimes I haven't had such access, and I've ended up making my own backing tracks that were not edited/mixed by the mix engineer that did the CD.

- how would we "treat" raw plugin sounds with are much harder (if not impossible) to sample? would we have the signal go through a multi-fx equipment and possibly a digital equalizer (allowing us to change EQ on the fly between songs and leaving the rest to the FOH) ?

Now you're getting down to the nuts and bolts of what makes this such a difficult problem. if you play electronic instruments live, you have to figure out how to mix them, and if there are a bunch of different sounds with different mix requirements, it's a daunting task. There's not simple answer to your question; you have to plan the whole thing, from what's happening on stage in your instruments / on-stage computers, to what's happening at the FOH and what kind of automation you're using or what is done manually by whom and when etc.

If you get a good soundguy involved, it will help (a lot). But the problem won't magically disappear just because you have a sound guy; the problem of what the band is responsible for and how to connect it to the FOH is still there and has to be worked through.

no silver bullet, unfortunately.

-synthoid

[gmx750]

thanks for the helpful reply.
we may need to reconsider some of the material we want to buy.
but as far as the audio interface goes, I would like to ask the forum if
a Focusrite Scarlett 18i6 is a safe bet for at least 3 separate signals for
the FOH mixer?
i can see six line inputs, two monitor outs and spdif I/O
I can't say i know or don't know if that allows us to have those 3 separate
signals being sent to the mixer...

but seeing two balanced outputs.. it makes sense to me that we can only have
one sample and one midi controller on those outs.

would we need an audio interface with more outputs?
are there specific audio interfaces for live performance?

best regards,
GMX750

[piper]

Originally Posted by gmx750

thanks for the helpful reply.
we may need to reconsider some of the material we want to buy.
but as far as the audio interface goes, I would like to ask the forum if
a Focusrite Scarlett 18i6 is a safe bet for at least 3 separate signals for
the FOH mixer?
i can see six line inputs, two monitor outs and spdif I/O

It says it has 4 analog outs.

What I think will be most important for you, if you need an audio interface on stage, is that it's bulletproof. Nothing will kill the vibe of a live show as quick as needing to putz around with your gear. The interface I have (Tascam us8080) will occasionally get whacked out on playback and play nasty gritty sounds (like listening to a modem, kind of). You wouldn't want that on stage.

[synthoid]

Originally Posted by gmx750

would we need an audio interface with more outputs?
are there specific audio interfaces for live performance?

I've been using an RME UFX on stage for the past couple years, and from what I've seen, it's the best, period. Best drivers, reliability and performance, best combination of analog IO, very good MIDI, best feature set (including ability to record/playback directly from an attached USB drive). It's not cheap of course, but it's a killer.

I'm not familiar with the Focusrite, sorry.

Another option I like is to use the integrated audio output on the on-stage computers with some kind of small isolation transformer, into an on-stage mixer. That has the advantage of simplifying the computer/interface stuff, but it depends of course a lot on what kinds of controllers and live audio signals you need to manage, where and how etc.

-synthoid

[gmx750]

the UFX is an audio beast : D
I've only heard good things about it, but the price.... ouch

It seems like a very safe investment.. it's probably better if the band saves up some more... The two midi ins and outs are an extremely welcome feature, especially since there's going to be some heavy use of midi on stage.

[Cover'd]

Good thread this with lots of excellent input throughout

Adding a slightly different slant, we do exactly what the OP is after. Live 4-piece band consisting of Drums, Bass, Keys & 2 x guitars (depending on song) with 5 vocal mics. Everything is DI'd through rackmount processors into desk / PA / monitors - no backline whatsoever - including triggered drums and cymbals. Our monitoring is simply the finished FOH mix fed back to us

We have a MacBook Pro which controls all the patch changes on keys, guitar & vocal processors as well as sending sequenced lighting commands to the lighting. All entirely self-contained and we can play to up to around 500 people with our own rig

It works very well but there has been a mountain of production which has taken place beforehand. Tweaks can be made on the fly with the rack and mixer sat onstage, but in general, it is very much a case of turn up, plug in and instant, good sound (active PA cabs set to desired volume / blend etc)

However, if the system fails, we're buggered. It's that simple. No acoustic drums means no show if the MBP crashes. In harnessing the technology, we lay ourselves at its mercy. However, the trade off between no need to mic kits or amps, not needing sound or lighting guys in tow and being able to get a consistent sound quickly and easily is worth it for us. Oh and yes, we've used a Focusrite Saffire Pro40 for a few years now without any issues (touching as much wood as one can find! )

Some musicians couldn't handle not having their own mix, but we've kinda grown up with it for a decade and more now. Here's a live run at Muse's Uprising straight from the desk and because we have no acoustic kit or cranked backline, we all find it easy to work with

[gmx750]

I'm sorry for my ignorance but when you mean DI'd you mean the audio signal is sent
through a balanced line out right? either through a signal processor or a dedicated
DI box.

We were thinking on getting to know ableton live, since many bands rely on it
for their live performances. just off the top of my head I can name deadmau5 and
gotye, which are no beginners on the matter.
However, none of us own a mac so we would have to rely on a stripped down
and optimised version of windows. (i've read and heard that windows 8 brings
some welcome features to musicians, latency and resource wise)

We have indeed our own PA set, but it's run by a simple powered mixer. and some
second-hand passive speakers... for rehearsal and learning purposes...
in a live situation we would have to deal with a lot of different representations
of the sound spectrum (through different PA speakers, and sound technicians).
This is one of the reasons why we're inclined towards having our songs properly mixed and mastered
before sampling every element and triggering them via MIDI.

Our drum solution would comprise of a full acoustic kit, complemented by trigger pads and
cymbals for the more "electronic" songs.

As far as the audio interface goes, we have indeed considered the Focusrite Saffire pro40.
It certainly is more appealing, budget wise... and doesnt seem to represent much of a compromise
when compared to the UFX....
but.. the UFX will allways be the U.F.X

I will check the video out, but my workplace has limited bandwidth. not to mention blocked video
streaming protocols ...

[Cover'd]

Originally Posted by gmx750

I'm sorry for my ignorance but when you mean DI'd you mean the audio signal is sent through a balanced line out right? either through a signal processor or a dedicated DI box.

Our guitar & bass processors all have direct out (line level) capability so they can be plugged straight into the mixing desk - that's different of course to trying to take a DI from a traditional guitar amp head etc as all the impedance matching is already taken care of

Vocal processors and keyboards all operate at standard line level anyway, so again, they're straight into the mixing desk

Originally Posted by gmx750

As far as the audio interface goes, we have indeed considered the Focusrite Saffire pro40. It certainly is more appealing, budget wise... and doesnt seem to represent much of a compromise when compared to the UFX.... but.. the UFX will allways be the U.F.X

The UFX is indeed the U.F.X. but to be honest, for a live situation where PAs, rooms and a host of other factors come into play, the difference will be non-existent. However, if you have the cash, go for it!

We toyed with the Fireface 800, but decided that the money could be used elsewhere and have had not one single reason to ever think we chose the wrong option

Originally Posted by gmx750

I will check the video out, but my workplace has limited bandwidth. not to mention blocked video streaming protocols ...

It's only an audio clip, but yeah, I appreciate the restrictions still apply!

[gmx750]

Right, you have the advantage of having hardware processors for your vocals, guitars and bass.
We're having a mountain of doubts and questions piling up as we post replies here on gearslutz... it's great to finally see that we may be on the right track.

This thread has been extremely useful for us, and I believe many other bands go through the same doubts and problems we are currently facing.

We are currently discussing the feasibility of having 2 PCs for our live performance: one handling VSTs another handling samples. If this is a feasible solution, how would we connect both pcs to the focusrite 40 pro? could we simply use both firewire ports?

synthoid mentioned using an isolation transformer for direct connection between PC and mixer.. does that provide enough signal clarity without those sound artifacts caused by internal interference?

We're also wondering if there's a better option given that firewire 400 is a bit out dated... now with fw800 and usb 3.0

For triggering samples we were initially thinking about the akai MPD 18s but since they only come with midi over usb, we hesitated on buying them.
It's also true that most audio interfaces come with only one midi in and one midi out... and to connect several midi controllers to one audio interface would imply using a midi merger (as far as our knowledge goes).
we would also have to connect the drum pads for percussion sampling as well... How would a midi interface fit in this setup?
would it work if we had a multi-port midi interface connected to the Pc via usb, and routing the signal through the plugin and into the audio interface?

I'm asking this because there are obviously many sollutions that allow for several midi controllers to be connected to a PC.... but having, say 5 or 6 midi over usb signals in a laptop is certainly not the best option, jitter and bandwidth wise....

any opinions / sugestions?

thank you very much again

[Cover'd]

Originally Posted by gmx750

We are currently discussing the feasibility of having 2 PCs for our live performance: one handling VSTs another handling samples. If this is a feasible solution, how would we connect both pcs to the focusrite 40 pro? could we simply use both firewire ports?

You would need an interface for each PC - plugging both into the same Interface won't work in the way you're thinking unfortunately. Two ports are provided for daisy-chaining multiple devices to one PC (such as audio interface and external hard drive), not multiple PCs to one device

Coming from an old windows laptop which only played MIDI to external sound modules three years ago, during initial explorations we initially thought we might need two machines - one for samples and another for controlling external processors and lighting etc. It turned out that the MacBook Pro can handle everything we want from it That said, we don't use multiple VSTs when performing live as any 'additional' orchestration etc is composed first, then mixed down to an audio file - the load on the machine is therefore kept minimal. We'd have no chance running Strings & Brass etc from within Logic in a live situation - loading times in between songs would be the killer for a start.

However, we do use it for Superior Drummer as a standalone instrument and that pre-loads 1.2Gb worth of samples which get triggered live. With 4Gb RAM in the MBP, that's not an issue. For live Keys & Synths, we use a Triton Extreme - no load on the laptop in that sense therefore.

Personally, if you're not using self-contained keys / synths, I think it would certainly be a good idea to use a separate PC / Laptop for VSTs hooked up to a controller keyboard because that would then be the sole function of that machine - similar to using a synth with inbuilt sounds if you will - but of course you'll still have the consideration of getting the sounds from that VST machine into the mixing desk and that will mean the VST machine will need it's own interface. A self-contained keyboard / synth just has the usual L&R 1/4 jack outputs for plugging straight into the mixer of course, so no sound module needed there, just a MIDI or USB input (if it has one) if you're controlling patches or having the central sequencer play additional parts.

Originally Posted by gmx750

synthoid mentioned using an isolation transformer for direct connection between PC and mixer.. does that provide enough signal clarity without those sound artifacts caused by internal interference?

I have no personal experience of those - never encountered any interference or artifacts with our Laptop, Interface or Mixer.

Originally Posted by gmx750

We're also wondering if there's a better option given that firewire 400 is a bit out dated... now with fw800 and usb 3.0

We run our Pro40 with 6 inputs hooked up (not necessarily for live work, they're just wired in for recording rehearsals / working on things etc), but we use 9 outputs (2 for iTunes 'pipe music' between sets, 2 for drum kit, 2 for additional orchestration, 2 for feeding the main mix to separate live recorder and another which feeds an LED visual click for song starts etc) as well as a headphone send for the drummer (which has click track & the main mix blended from within the Saffire Mixer software) and it also sends the MIDI out to the external processors etc. With that all going on, we've never once thought that the Firewire hook up was being tested to anything like its limit!


You've probably picked up that we're kinda used to this sort of set up! It's not come together in 5 minutes mind you - we've used the mixed MIDI & Live approach for about 20 years and even now, our set up continually evolves. Making the step to MacBook Pro with internal VSTs rather than keyboard / sound modules and using drum software / samples rather than a standalone drum module... as well as using computer based lighting software as opposed to MIDI commands being sent to an external DMX lighting controller was quite a step and it took a while to suss all that out. The need to pre-bounce all Logic projects so that they're audio files not live VSTs was just one example of the stuff we had to work out and build into a useable live format.

Originally Posted by gmx750

For triggering samples we were initially thinking about the akai MPD 18s but since they only come with midi over usb, we hesitated on buying them.
It's also true that most audio interfaces come with only one midi in and one midi out... and to connect several midi controllers to one audio interface would imply using a midi merger (as far as our knowledge goes).
we would also have to connect the drum pads for percussion sampling as well... How would a midi interface fit in this setup?
would it work if we had a multi-port midi interface connected to the Pc via usb, and routing the signal through the plugin and into the audio interface?

MIDI Over USB is absolutely fine

For the drums, we use ddrum triggers on mesh heads on normal acoustic shells - no acoustic noise but it still ‘looks right’. Cymbals are triggered type too and they’re all plugged into an Alesis I/O USB device, which in turn plugs into the MacBook Pro to fire the Superior Drummer samples. That is separate to the Pro40 therefore which is sending MIDI to a splitter for all the external processors, although in a previous set up, we used an Alesis DM5 purely for controlling the triggers (no module sounds used at all) and took the MIDI out from that and into the Pro40 to fire Superior Drummer that way - it’s just been separated up now.

Originally Posted by gmx750

I'm asking this because there are obviously many sollutions that allow for several midi controllers to be connected to a PC.... but having, say 5 or 6 midi over usb signals in a laptop is certainly not the best option, jitter and bandwidth wise....

any opinions / sugestions?

As above, we have three MIDI devices (although one is currently being taken out in favour of an internal virtual device for controlling the lighting software from Logic) and there’s not been an issue. One has been the Pro40 via Firewire and the other two have been from a USB Hub with no apparent flaws or restrictions.

Depending on the complexity of your keyboard / synth set up, you might well want to consider that separately to the central sequencer / triggered stuff purely to spread the load

In the examples I’ve given I talk about using MacBook Pro / Logic / Superior Drummer / Saffire Pro 40 but no need of course there’s no need to use any of that! A PC, different interface, different software & VSTs can all get you to where you want to go - it’s a matter if identifying what will work for you!

Originally Posted by gmx750

thank you very much again

No worries