Ok, I'm currently working as a live sound engineer & DJ in a VIP lounge in Tenerife. The night kicks off with solo singers performing covers of classic soul tracks and then there's a tribute to an old classic soul group with like 4 singers, for example the Drifters or the Four Tops etc. I have to do all the mic levels throughout the night play the backing tracks. When they finish I DJ for the rest of the night. It's generally an older audience of like 40+ so I don't really get to play everything I want but hey, I'm getting paid & I'm in the sun for the winter & it's not a booming night club so after a summer of destroying my ears at least I can give em a bit of a break.
ANYWAY, I have taken all the singers backing tracks and put them in Traktor so I can trigger them as required quickly & smoothly (before it was a complete shambles... mini discs, ipods & itunes on the house laptop was being used so the manager was all over the shop triggering the right tunes at the right time).
My concern is this; Traktor will sometimes glitch out on me, maybe like once every couple of months or so, like a 2-3 second stutter on the music. This I can handle in a general DJ situation as you can just hold your hands up and smile & the audience normally realise it's just a laptop glitch as you just carry on. However, I now have live singers relying on me so can't really afford to have Traktor glitch out on me. It's happened once already but luckily it was a strong performer who made a joke out of it by saying it was the remix and just carried on singing. But sometimes there are singers who aren't as strong talking wise and wouldn't be able to style it out or make a joke of it. They would just stand there looking confused and will just look stupid and that shit will come back on me.
SO, my question is this; what other steps can I take to ensure a glitch free performance? I have my latency set to around 7.ms. I am using a launchpad and a nanokontrol which run into a powered USB hub and the Audio 8 on it's own USB port. I am using a black Macbook 2.4, what USB port configuration would others use? i.e. would you have the Audio 8 on the front or back USB port?... I know there are issues with one of the ports sharing the screen or some shit. What would be more USB power intensive, the launchpad and nanokontrol with the hub, or the audio 8? Would anyone recommend using different software for this type of performance, maybe something more stable? Is there anything else anyone can recommend to minimise looking foolish with software glitching out?
Any help appreciated.
Cheers
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