Nice place for a rack

solo-act

Fractal Fanatic
Not THAT kind of rack. That said, it was in a place called Beaver Creek, Colorado.
The entire town is gated right off the interstate. I assume when the people are done "slumming it" in Vail, they stay here.

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People buy booze at beaver liquors. Obviously it's OUTSIDE the gates :)
Beaver Apparel for Men and Women
 
Yup, That sure is a nice place for a Rack their in Beaver creek, Oh yeah let's head on do to Beaver Liquors... :lol give me a brake.
 
Not sure who's being serious here, Sixstring or Guitardojo.
I'll delete the humor in the post and explain the setup. Is that what you guys want?
 
Not sure who's being serious here, Sixstring or Guitardojo.
I'll delete the humor in the post and explain the setup. Is that what you guys want?

Why so Serious? I'm serious.... I am more interested in your laptop -> Backing track set up etc.....
 
Why so Serious? I'm serious.... I am more interested in your laptop -> Backing track set up etc.....
Cool.
Laptop is an old 2005 powerbook running Digital Performer and MIO console. There's a cloned backup laptop in the black rack below the Axe-Fx. I run 10.4.11 because laptop runs cooler.

Backing tracks consist of an audio file mastered from my multitrack studio work and a midi track to automate the Axe-Fx.

Digital Performer lets me put all tracks in a single song list, and I can cue and play them with any midi command that can be sent to DP. Access and play are extremely fast, no closing/opening projects like logic, very robust midi implementation, easier on laptop processor than other DAWs. It's basically bulletproof.

MIO console is a laptop mixing board interface for the Metric Halo audio interface (below the axe-fx). The MH interface is one rack space, has a shark processor, and handles typical PA mixing and audio processing duties (routing, EQ, gate, compression, crossover, etc but also includes a preamp "character" modeler - choose from neve coloration, etc).

Since the mixing board is digital, you only set up sound once and save the board for that room. It receives backing tracks down firewire cable and Axe-Fx down AES cable. The only analog going into my board is my voice. Only one trip through AD DA for voice and guitar, sounds awesome.

So you're looking at a distributed processing approach which is good when using a laptop. Axe-Fx and Metric Halo do the heavy lifting, laptop does the easy stuff, which means I can use cheap laptops.

The Little Giant is a master remote control for the whole system and works like this:
- Each song with backing tracks has a master number. For example, song 041 in DP is patch 041 in the Axe-Fx and number 041 in the Little Giant.
- The Little Giant has a 10-key mode. Activate 10-key and then punch in the master number.
- When the number is punched in, it triggers a stream of commands out the midi and USB ports of the Little Giant (built in midi interface!).
- That command stream stops all laptop playback, cues the backing track in DP, sets the FX channel slider levels in MIO console mixing board, and sends a patch change to Axe-Fx.
- I don't believe any footswitch except the LG does the last three things I just described.
- The Little Giant does typical footswitch duty as well, muting vocal FX in the mixing board, sending global bypass to Axe-Fx, triggering patch volume up/down, receiving Axe-Fx tuner, etc.
- The midi in the Little Giant is two-way, so you only need one cable for both outgoing midi and incoming Axe-Fx tuner.
- Volume and expression pedal are part of outgoing midi as well.

This setup lets me have Instant random access to cue/play any song in the show; solo blocks turn on automatically, so any non-expression pedal solo can be taken anywhere; I can nuke vocal reverb between songs; and I can do everything hands free without touching or looking at the laptop except to check set time. During the song, I don't even need to be in the same room: everything but one speaker is inside that wine bar - LOL.
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You may have noticed there's some redundancy. Both laptop and footswitch send the same patch changes and CC's to the Axe-Fx. There's a backup laptop, and if both laptops go, the Metric Halo can run in standalone mode with knobs for vocal level and floor monitor level and choice of 8 boards saved to hardware buttons. Here's another -- the MH can be powered from the laptop battery through firewire. That means if power is cut off to everything, the board stays on and the powered speakers don't go POP! Everything dies in silence. This has saved my ass more than a couple times.

Funny part is, I've had power die and come back up several seconds later and haven't missed a beat - HA HA HA.
Because the board is still running, and the laptop is still playing the backing track...if I keep playing/singing in the silence and the power comes back soon enough, it's like the old radio station through a tunnel thing.
 
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When I was playing up there years ago they had the local dive shop right next to the liquor store.

That's right, Beaver Liquors and Beaver Divers!
 
Not sure who's being serious here, Sixstring or Guitardojo.
I'll delete the humor in the post and explain the setup. Is that what you guys want?

I was kidding Solo... With the title and then all of the play on words it's hard for anyone to not joke with this. All kidding aside your setup is very coo ;). It sounds like you have a great deal of time out into it, very nice!
 
Thanks for the run down of the setup. That is some seriously cool stuff you have going on there.
 
Yes!!!! And Metric Halo! The ideal, perfect set up for the Fractal! I notice right away with the mixer on you laptop. Looks like mine! Awesome.
 
Thanks guys.
I had a simple goal: Sing, play guitar, entertain -- more of those, less of everything else.

With 4 tools, Digital Performer, Axe-Fx, Metric Halo, Gordius Little Giant, I could do that.

1 idea, 4 tools...simple enough.

All I had to do was isolate the functions inside the tools that accomplished the one idea, and that's what created my specific setup. I'd say it took about two weeks work to learn and implement.

Finding the tools and then learning them took most of the time/effort.
 
What's the little monitor in the front? Looks like the perfect size for a solo set up. Hows the audio from it?
 
What's the little monitor in the front? Looks like the perfect size for a solo set up. Hows the audio from it?
FBT verve 8MA - sounds great. Upper mids and highs are more pronounced at higher volumes so I reduce that. Otherwise a solid, clear speaker for the size.
 
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