Ok, I have been thinking very hard about this for a long time and I think I have come to a conclusion, but I just want to run it through you guys to see your opinions, thoughts, problems and solutions perhaps.
This will be my ultimate setup, I know some of you out there will think this to be overkill or I could save some money or whatever, but I like to only buy things once – I go all out or not at all
So my budget is about AU$12,000
I already have –
1 Macbook Pro 17” running OSX 10.4
1 Macbook Pro 15” running OSX 10.5
1 M-Audio Firewire 410
The 17” Macbook Pro (Herein called Mac 1) will be running Traktor (Hopefully Pro if they can sort their shit out).
The 15” Macbook Pro (Herein called Mac 2) will be running Ableton Live
Now, I want to get either –
A Xone 4D + 2 x 1D’s or
A Xone 92 + 4 x 1D’s
Either way there is no huge difference except that I will have to buy another sound card.
I want to run Traktor on Mac 1 for all the 4 decks (each having its own 1D controller) for the transport and looping and maybe a couple of effects, and run Ableton on Mac 2 for the bulk of my effects. I wanted to connect the 2 Macs via Midi over Ethernet. I don’t see the Midi clock problem being relevant as I wont be keeping the 2 programs in time per se, only a rough BPM for effects. This way the top part of the 1D’s from the 4 lineal faders up will control the effects in Ableton and everything under that will control Traktor.
The main problem I see is the actual sound routing of the 2 laptops to the mixer.
The way I see it I can either run the sound from Mac 1 (Traktor) to the Mixer and then to Mac 2 (Ableton) and then to the amp or whatever.
Or, I run the sound from Mac 1 through Mac 2 and then to the mixer
Will latency be an issue here?
Another issue is the 1D’s have troubles going through a USB hub (Powered or not) and the Macbook Pro’s only have 3 USB ports. But maybe if I send Midi over Ethernet I can plug 2 1D’s into Mac 1 and 2 1D’s into Mac 2 and have the same functionality.
And all this gear will be housed in a custom road case with built in power with surge protection and sound cards built in with all connections accessible from the outside
So what do you guys and girls think of this plan?
Any suggestions, queries, problems and solutions will be much, much appreciated
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