Personal Digital Recorders Live?

[Jason3fc]

I have sort of a dilemma that I was hoping some people could help with.

I am in a band in which we use some electronic phrasing and loops and such in our recordings and it would be great to reproduce them live. Using a loop machine or such is out of the question, since these would be played back as more orchestrations, then techno type loop repeating.

Currently we have quite a bit that was developed in Reason and transfered into Protools during recording. We tried using Reason live and it proved to be too cumbersome, and MIDI triggering wasn't timely enough.

I am looking for a small solution to record predetermined, loops and parts (audio, not midi necesarrily) to play along with live.

I have looked at several of the person digital recorders such as:

Korg PXR4
Zoom PS02 and MRS4
Boss BR-532
Tascam Porta 5

The dilemma is that I need this thing to be able to split its metronome click track features to a separate output (even if just L or R) so that I can send the audio out one signal to the live mix, and another out of the click track to be fed back to the drummers monitor.

I havent really been able to determine if any of these recorders do this, except for the PXR4 which it was confirmed that it does not.

I am not looking at these for the effects or the rhythm sections, just something to accomplish playing back our prerecorded tracks live and being able to split the metronome and the output audio.

We would also be using it to record practice on occasion.

Thanks in advance for anyone's help!

[Jason3fc]

Anybody??? Come on guys I know somebody has to have one of these boxes. :confused:

[TeeCee]

Electrix has the Repeater which is a hardware looper. No experience with it, I just know that it exists. Ableton Live is software designed to do what you are doing (PC for sure, maybe Mac as well).

As a side note, Reason will respond as good as your PC and audio interface allow it to. I did a test with two hardware synths playing Reason back with 128BPM, 16th note arpegios, while jamming on my DrumKAT 3.5 and associated PoleKATs and KickKAT, triggering Reason to see if it felt like I was playing a drum machine or synth back directly or if it felt like I was playing 100' from the speakers. No problems. The drum hits all felt real. Home built AthlonXp 1600+ with an M-Audio Studiophile.

[Jason3fc]

Thanks for your response..

I think the prob could be in the trigger device. I was using a Roland T505 Drum Controller. I was using a MIDISport 1x1 which may have accounted for timing problems. Hardware is a P4 1GHZ with over 400 meg of ram. No computer slowness there.

The one reason I was thinking of something harware based is the drummer isnt to estute with computers, and using Reason proved to be a monumental task for him.

I think I may just need to find a better controller Like your DrumKat.

Thanks again!

[TeeCee]

What sound card are you using? There's nothing magical about the DrumKAT (although it is the sh*t). Your problem with performance and Reason should be between the MIDI and audio interface and their drivers. But if you need a hardware solution, tweaking the system will gain you nothing.

If you go the Reason route, you will just have to get some very nice performances set up that he can choose at will with the samples and drum kits pre-loaded. Still again, Ableton Live may work best for you, if you stick with a PC.