i recently got shot (virtually) by a technical issue during a live session, so i drop this question to this forum since it is the best place to get a decent answer.
i have a setup that uses win10 - cubase 10.5 - Vienna ensemble 32 and 64 servers - and around a 100 tracks that are assigned to various live loaded instruments (32 bitters are Vienna 32 server, some older 64 that stil remain stored on Vienna 64 server, some on cubase straight away, combinded with a couple of backing tracks used to drive the gig as audio files in cubase. There is a drumset that is connected with a cheap but still available today midi interface to connect an old roland drum pads thing. Basically this has let me to do gigs for years. There is guitar and vocals but these don’t fit in to the question.
Nowadays with shortening hop-on hop-off staging times, i am having the problem that i just need too much time to load everything up, and secure things in a way i can survive a gig. (i can not prepare things in advance since i need to have everything on stage to boot, and with win10 f.e. the midi interface with the drums is an issue)
So i am looking for a solution where i separate the backing tracks to a separate device, and thus reducing loading times. Synths and stuff will still be triggered on the laptop. So what are you guys and girls using for this type of a performance ?
An extra request is, when running in to trouble, the pre loaded with keyboards and drums backtracks are also present on the device, so that a show can go on, no matter what. So it’s a question of what type of life performing things you are using for such a situation. And i must be able to switch between them, as this should be only a matter of switching tracks on the player itself, but it would be perfect if i could reboot inbetween with the laptop. (loosing synchronisation is for me not an issue, since i can deal with that in advance and thus use temposynced files if needed in cubase and be almost on top of it, i’m playing live)
many thanks in advance to your answers,
kind regards,
R.