In this section I will share my information about performing live with VST instruments. Why VST instruments? It's a light-weight setup, ready within minutes with well organized and fast recallable settings! There are tons of free instruments and samples! Do I need to go on? It's almost all fun... if you know what hardware works best and how to tune OS and software to become a stable platform for real-time glitchfree audio processing. So without further due, my setup:
Hardware
- Upper keyboard; Roland A-800 pro
- Lower keyboard; Yamaha P-105b
- Footpedals; Roland DP-10
- Laptop; Lenovo Intel P7 3612QM, 16Gb, 3x USB
- Passive 4-port USB hub
- Audio/MIDI interface; Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 USB audio/midi interface
- 2x EV ZXA1 8 inch, 800 watts 2-way monitors
- Stands: Staggs
- Cases: Staggs
Software
- OS; Windows 10 64bit, tuned for realtime audio processing
- VST host; Cantabile Performer 3 32bit and 64bit
- VST2 instruments and plugins, 32bit and 64bit audio
- jBridge; wrapper for 32bit VST2 instruments and plugins in a 64bit VST host
- Virtual CloneDrive; mount image files as a virtual DVD drive
- Winrar, sfPack, sfArk; (audio) archive file extraction
- MidiOX; Swiss army knife for MIDI
Configuration
After the windows 10 basic installation, I uninstalled Windows apps. Then I tuned windows for realtime audio processing. Next I installed Cantabile, configuring to use my offline license, using separate folders for 32/64 bit Cantabile and separate subfolders for setlists, songs, racks and resources. Then I installed jBridge.
To enable Windows to easily mount image files as a virtual DVD drive, I installed Virtual CloneDrive.
Cantabile
The structure of Cantabile 3 can be used in many different ways. See this video to get started.
