The CPU does maths and moves things around in RAM - so you need enough RAM to hold all that, and enough CPU to do all the maths. The less maths and less moving around the better, of course, and it’s not always obvious what counts as “all the maths”. For instance, Modartt’s Pianoteq is modelled, not sampled, and you’d think it was quite CPU heavy but for some reason it’s not. Whereas a really good convolution reverb will definitely give your CPU a workout. One other important point here - as well as generating audio output from this maths it is the CPU’s job to move data around to work on it. The number one reason for apparently poor CPU performance is actually too little RAM. ![]() Typical view of memory pressure from OSX’ Activity Monitor tool When your computer runs low on RAM the Operating System (OSX in this case) starts to do some actually pretty clever stuff to free up memory. Here we can see that 2.84Gb of RAM is “compressed”. This means that OSX thinks I’ve not used it for a while, but the application that created it is still running. So it compresses it, and if the application comes back and needs it again it will uncompress it. In general this is fine, and you don’t even know it’s happening. But on a theatre rig that is doing nothing else you really don’t want OSX to be doing this, so it’s essential you have enough RAM for the things you’re doing, or you’ll be losing CPU cycles to compressing / uncompressing data rather than processing it. I would recommend a mid to upper range processor and at least 8Gb RAM. My theatre rig was, for years, an i5 Mac Mini with 8Gb RAM, only recently upgraded to an i7 Mac Mini with 16Gb RAM due to a couple of shows that had massive concert files.ĭisclaimer - I am still on Intel Mac and haven’t yet moved to the new generation of Apple Silicon, where higher performance with less RAM may reduce the hardware requirement. ![]() The internal sound cards are noisy, and you really don’t want your WhatsApp notification sound played out over the theatre FoH speakers because you forgot to mute them! Most importantly is whether you’re using a laptop, a mac mini or a fully loaded Mac Pro you need an external sound card. The cheapest way of doing this effectively is something like the Behringer UCA222, which is around £20 from a number of retailers. It is without doubt the best sounding, most versatile, most inspiring live rig I have ever played.It has RCA phono outs, which any decent sound technician should be able to work with. With all this in mind about 9 months ago I embarked on building a 2 keyboard system – one weighted, the other unweighted – centred around a Mac Mini, Novation Remote SL 61 MK2 and a Roland RD64 and I’ve published a 2 part video on how I got it all to work. Behringer have teased us with the long promised Motor series but they are yet to appear. The closest product that exists today for this is the Novation Remote SL MK2 series featuring updatable LCD screens. While there have been a number of excellent studio based control surfaces that provide visual feedback – like Mackie Controls, there has been little or no development of this functionality for the live performing keyboard player. If you go with the Mac Mini the issue then becomes getting adequate controller visual feedback since you’ve lost the laptop screen that was this – which brings us to point #2. A Mac Mini is a much more cost effective and robust option. Because laptops are fragile you don’t want them hanging around up near the keyboards when performing because it’s a vulnerable position for them to be in. #2 is that most MIDI controller manufacturers either do not offer the ability for visual feedback on the controller sent from the computer, or if they do it requires a closed communication system to get it to work. ![]() #1 is that most people (and Apple themselves) think the best computer to use for it is a laptop – but it’s not. Personal experience and multiple different hardware/ computer setups has taught me that what lets it down is two things. Better sounds, more control assignments on a per patch basis, splits, layers and lots of other good stuff. It offers many real benefits over any hardware keyboard system. It implements in software everything I had ever wanted or wished for when performing live with multiple keyboards for the past several decades.
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