Last night a bass player friend and I did our first gig as a duo. I’m here to report that VST Live 3.0.4 performed flawlessly.
1 - All backing tracks played perfectly in sync
2 - All song actions executed as expected
3 - The MIDI tracks fired off Program Changes to my guitar rig right on time throughout gig
4 - Two Stacks for our vocals processed correctly and sounded great
5 - Automation for long echoes were right on time
Most of the songs play one after another. Where we have programmed stops to talk to the audience, I use a remote switch to start playback. The only time I had to interact with the program was to load the 2nd set.
My goal when I started using VST Live was to have the program run completely in the background, with very little interaction from me. This way I could concentrate on my playing and singing and not have to worry or think about what was going on with the PC. I’m very happy to say that my goal has been achieved!
I would like to say thank-you to everyone who participates on this forum. I have learned so much about VST Live from your questions and comments.
A very special thank-you to the developers, you listen to this community, and every week release new updates and improvements. Your hard work and dedication to making this program the Industry Standard is very much appreciated.
I’m using a Native Instruments Traktor X1 for remote control of various functions in VST Live. I’ve also used a Logidy 3 footswitch when I want to go hands free.
For rehearsals and gigs I have an older Windows 10 desktop PC that I put into a rack mounted case. Intel i5-4690 @3.50GHz, 16 GB Ram, GeForce GTX970 4GB Graphics Card and a 1TB SanDisk Ultra 3D NVMe SSD. The computer only has the programs and plug-ins installed that I need for live performance and I only connect it to the Internet when I want to get updates. I also went through and optimized it for audio playback using tips I found on the internet such as turning off all power saving options, selecting performance over energy savings, disabled Windows Search, disabled unused items in the Device Manager, disabling Anti-Virus when not on the internet, disabling Windows task scheduler.
I use Cubase 14 on my home studio Windows PC (Intel i7, 16GB Ram) to create the backing tracks and use the VSTL export function to create the media files for each song. I will then import the songs into VSTL and tweak everything up on my studio PC. Then I Archive the Project and copy it to the Performing PC.
I just use two stacks for our vocals with SSL autoEQ and SSL autoDYN plug-ins, and then I use a send in the Mixer to Waves CLA-Epic for vocal effects.
I’m using a Soundcraft Ui24R digital mixer as our playback device which has a fixed 48k playback sample rate and I have the buffer set at 128. The maximum amount of stereo tracks playing at one time is six, along with processing the two vocal stacks. The Soundcraft has no problem, no dropouts or crackles.
It’s absolutely rewarding to read that VST Live did so well for you. Thanks a bunch for your kind words! 