Hmm, I think this is the right place to ask...
Audio interfaces for people who use laptops on stage?
I play in a band and we do a lot of Ableton and Reason and a bit of Pure Data stuff when we're making demos and throwing ideas around, and we want to start using all that stuff live. Synthesisers, samplers, live signal processing, that sort of thing. My interface (half-broken Alesis iO14) is terrible, and my changing living conditions might mean I'll have a decent amount to spend on a new interface.
I don't know about the kind of conventions for using this sort of gear on a stage. TRS outputs? XLRs? Is laptop and interface all I need?
As for i/o options, I want maybe two inputs (guitar in from an effect loop box and a mic), and a few outputs... FOH, headphone mix for drummer, output back into guitar signal chain, maybe other headphones?
I'm looking at the
MOTU ultralite most of all. MOTU seem to make pretty good stuff (Good enough for Christopher Willits!) and it seems to meet my requirements. I'd love to afford an Apogee or Metric Halo, which seem to be the best ones I can find, but not quite right now. My thinking is, buy a good one now 'cause I'll only have to buy a good one later again. Am I kidding myself by thinking that the MOTU is a pretty good piece of kit?
So I'm kinda cluless about the standards and conventions around this stuff. Am I thinking the right way?
There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse.