Hey guys,
I 'd like to buy a laptop to play live with my Roland guitar synthesizer GR-20,using standalone programs like Kontakt .
I know I have to buy also an external USB or Firewire audio interface ,tell me which is best for the set up.Any suggestions
from guitarists or keyboardists are welcomed.Thanks in advance.

 

It all depends on that four letter word that make the world go round cash.
And how much have you got to play with?.

cheap laptop

 

You know the midi out lags more than the internal synth right?

Before i reply with gear suggestions, are you going to put the real guitar sound and the gr-20 internal sounds through an audio in on the laptop for processing as well?
Or is this strictly for midi triggering of virtual instruments and only needs a midi in and a single pair of audio outs?

 

Nowadays 4-core CPU is minimum if you want to future-proof yourself

 

I use the VG-99 with an MSI GT683DXR-423...I upgraded from 12 to 16Gb of RAM and swapped out the 2 RAID drives for an SSD and 1Tb

 

This Alien is out of my world.You're right about cash.Thank you.

 

Only for MIDI triggering.The guitar audio will go to the guitar amp.Thank you.
@Zenarcist
[Nowadays 4-core CPU is minimum if you want to future-proof yourself ].Thanx.

 

MSI is a powerful one.BTW are you happy with VG-99,'cause I tried it in a store a few years ago and I didn't like it.maybe I'm wrong.
Thank you.

 

Any modern laptop in the middle of the range to top of the range will do for this, unless of course you are loading giant kontakt instruments.

For playing synths i can give you an example of my system.
I have a laptop with a core 2 duo @ 2.1ghz with 8 gigs of ram and a 750gig 7200rpm drive.
This system will allow me to have about 8 to 10 vst instruments loaded that i can switch between to trigger with my guitar.

With sampled instruments...
I can load it up with sampled instruments as well, but past about 4 gigs of samples it gets a little glitchy when i need to switch between them fast.

This is all with a latency of 8ms through a focusrite saffire pro dsp 24 , 8ms is the equivalent of being about 7 or 8 feet away from the foldback/amp
Yes, it is a firewire interface, but my laptop luckily has a chipset the interface likes. (see below)
So i make sure my foldback is right up against me pretty much (like a foot away) , and it puts me at about as much lag as any of the other musicians whose amp is on the backline.

So pretty much any laptop with specs past that (which most will be by now, as mine is about 4 years old), will do just fine.

I would avoid firewire audio solutions for a laptop, as fw isn't a big selling point thesedays and alot of the laptops either don't have it at all, or have cheap chipsets that audio interfaces won't like.
USB audio interface for what you need it for only requires a stereo out, BUT...
You will need to be prepared for venues and sound system guys only wanting a mono out from your synths/samples.
Some places will be fine taking a stereo output, but just remember if you give them stereo and they pan it out as stereo, anything panned hard right or left will only be heard by that side of the room for the people close to the speakers.

The audio interface is also advisable to get one that can be usb or mains powered.
You want to always mains power it wherever possible.
This is important in case the laptop freezes or glitches/resets/loses power, so you can mute the audio output while the system reboots and doesnt blow loud initialisation pops through the p.a system

Hopefully this info helps ;D

btw - if you end up getting real serious about having a bulletproof setup and want all the cables and fiddling about to go away entirely, check out a muse receptor, awesome piece of gear designed for stage use in exactly this kind of situation, but... it has a pro price to go with it.

 

When it comes to computer specifications add the requirements of each part
For example if you just want to run windows 7 with KONTAKT Player 4, the minimum system you could use would be

windows 7
1 GHz processor
1 GB RAM
16 GB hard drive space
and
KONTAKT Player 4
1.4 GHz
1 GB of RAM
1 GB of hard drive space

resulting in it being a minimum laptop specs of
2.4 GHz processor or 1.4 GHz dulecore processor
2 GB Ram
17 GB hard drive

This is the absolute minimum so anything better will do better then just work.
If you want it to run perfect add the recomended specifications of the program and opperating system.

Remember if you plan on running more than 1 program at a time add all the programs (that you'll be running at once) and operating system together.

 

Thanx for your reply,my friend.

 

I think 8ms is an excellent level of latency.Maybe if I go up to around 12ms I could save a little more CPU power.Your informations are very useful to me.
But I don't know how long I have to wait to complete my dream,because here in Greece my income from my job is getting smaller and smaller every 2-3 months.You see our politicians were stealing our future and our childrens future and nobody of the people involved in politics ,warned us.But that's another story.I want to thank you for your time,my friend.