Good solution for keyboard ensemble

johanibraaten

Hi friends!

I have a problem that I hope someone might be able to help me with.

A while back I started a ”keyboard orchestra” with my student where we play various music from orchestral (classical, soundtracks etc.) to synth ensemble and other stuff. The way we do it now is using a selection of various digital pianos and hardware synthesizers. It’s working fine but it Is a lot of work because we don’t have a dedicated room for it so before every rehearsal I have to collect all the instruments from different rooms and hook it up to a sound system and it takes some time.

The way I would like to do it is to use a number of midi controllers either together with the students computers which unfortunately are basic Chromebooks or using a better computer that can be used as one sound source for all the keywords, about 5-7 students at the same time.

I have tried both ways with not entirely satisfying result. The problem with Chromebooks as I understand it is that you can’t really install any VST-like plugins. Instead I have experimented with using Soundtrap which is an online DAW. This works ok but is dependendent on stable WiFi-connection that’s not optimal, especially in performance situation. There’s also a little bit of latency, not too bad but still a little too much. I would also kind of need an audio interface for each student for more robustness, as for now we’ve used the headphone out.

The other way I’ve tied is to set up a project in logic or MainStage on my MacBook Pro where I create a track for each sound/student where I set different Midi-channels for each track and then send corresponding midi-channel from the different controllers. This kind of works but is very unstable and some tacks are getting ”hung up” almost every time where a sound keeps on sounding and I have to close the program to reset it. I have used both USB-MiDI with a USB hub and good ol’ DIN-midi with an ESI M8U interface to hook up the controllers to the computer, both with similar result.

Do you have any suggestions for good solutions for this particular situation? There is a possibility to install android apps on my students Chromebooks so maybe that could be a solution? Are there any good sounding, good working musical sound apps for android?

And for the one computer solution, are there better programs than Logic Pro / MainStage that handle these things better or are there better workflows than the one I described to make it work in a stable way?

Any input is hugely appreciated🎶

CyberGene

johanibraaten This kind of works but is very unstable and some tacks are getting ”hung up” almost every time where a sound keeps on sounding and I have to close the program to reset it.

I don’t think this is an issue with Logic or the MacBook Pro (which are all professional products that are proven to be rock solid for music production).

I think rather some of the keyboards are faulty or have problematic MIDI implementation. Also, I’d assume you use long cables to wire all these keyboards to a USB hub or to the multi-MIDI interface and that’s another point of possible issues.

However in no way you can blame it on Logic or the Mac computers because you can hardly get better and more stable music production environment than that.

Joannchr

johanibraaten may I ask the following questions in case you I put various midi input into separate midi tracks in Logic Pro .

are you using an intel or silicon Mac book ?

( in all cases for this type of setup , a Mac mini m2 is way more performant )
What is the latency setup ( you define the sample rate in the Logic Pro project settings, and the buffer sample size in the VST section . 48 KHz/128 minimum .
Have you selected the low latency mode in Logic Pro ? Specially if you are using fx plugins for some tracks .
Are you using a Powered USB hub ? Some USB hubs are very low quality ) splitting the USB inputs into 2 separate USB ports on the Mac may help as well given the fact that midi transport is serial .

There is no reason it couldn’t work .

johanibraaten

CyberGene Thanks for the input. I guess it cold be a controller issue, we have other models so I will try them out to see if there is a difference in performance.The strange thing though is that all the controllers are working just fine when I connect them one at the time to the computer. Regarding the cables you might have a point, what puzzles me is that it shows the exact same problem both with the DIN-connection and with USB. But I will try to get my hand on other cables. You don't think the problem could be that MainStage or Logic simply aren't made for handling that amount of controllers playing at the same time?

Joannchr Great questions, it's good to try to sort things out.

1. are you using an intel or silicon Mac book ?

Yeah, my computer isn't the most powerful one. It's an Intel i5 model from 2020 with 16BG of RAM. It's my work computer and it will be another year before I got it replaced though…. I heard good things about the new Mac minis, however I would very much like to get it to work on a laptop since I commute by train to work and like to use that time to set up things and also have the portability for live use. Do you think a new MacBook Pro m2 will perform as good as the mini?

What is the latency setup

I've tried different settings both 44.1 and 48 KHz with different buffer settings. It's seems to be a little more stable if I increase the buffer size but it's not a big difference and it doesn't solve the problem

Have you selected the low latency mode in Logic Pro ? Specially if you are using fx plugins for some tracks .

Yes I have. Not any significant difference though….

Are you using a Powered USB hub ? Some USB hubs are very low quality ) splitting the USB inputs into 2 separate USB ports on the Mac may help as well given the fact that midi transport is serial .

Yes, I use a powered USB hub. It's a simpel model though so I guess trying out a better one might be a good idea, do you have any suggestions what to look for? Great advice to spread the USB-connections on different ports on the Mac, I haven't tried that. What strange though is that it shows the same problem even if I use DIN-mid instead of USB which might indicate that it's not a USB-problem?

Thanks a lot for your input!

Joannchr

johanibraaten Your Mac 2020 with 16 GB should be powerful enough. I personally use a USB Hub from Icon ( Icon OneHub USB Midi DAW controller) . It might help but not solve your problem given the issues exists also with the DIN Hub. What you can try is effectively to split part of the load using both USB hub & Din hub, each being connected to a different USB port on your MacBook. You can also monitor CPU Usage with the MAC monitor and add the students one after the other and verify that you don't exceed 60% CPU time. CPU queuing above 60% creates audible cracks and issues, but usually Logic sends an alert when this happens , so you have seen it assuming you are monitoring logic when this happens ( the flag for CPU alerts in logic is setup in the General section of Audio Tab in Preferences and you can monitor at channel level) . Other than that , I am short of ideas. Cheers

johanibraaten

Joannchr What you can try is effectively to split part of the load using both USB hub & Din hub, each being connected to a different USB port on your MacBook. You can also monitor CPU Usage with the MAC monitor and add the students one after the other and verify that you don't exceed 60% CPU time.

That's good advises, thank you. I will try it out. It would be nice to get it to work with USB as it also powers the controllers, with DIN-connection I will have to use power adapters with the keyboards. Not a big deal but it's nice to work as streamlined and hassle free as possible.