Taking Komplete 6 On Stage

I'd really like to start using the Komplete 6 soft synths on stage as the backbone of my synth rig but I'm not quite sure what the best way to do so is. My laptop is a Macbook Pro 2.4ghz Duo Core Intel w/ 4GB RAM. I need to be able to change presets with a MIDI controller quickly and stably and I need to have access to more than 1 preset in each song.

I'm fully aware that Brainspawn's Forte is the best VST host for live performing. Unfortunately, I'm not on a Windows machine so I won't be able to use it. There really don't seem to be many alternatives to this software for Mac users. Cantabile is PC only as well.

It seems as though most people are using Kore 2 in the studio and I haven't really read about any live gig success stories. I'd really like to get some more info on this topic before I go ahead and shell out for the software. What are your thoughts?

I'm also definitely eager and willing to have a look at any other VST hosts that are working for Mac users on stage.

 

Just out of curiosity. Why are you so sure that Forte is the best live host? I didn't try it but all together I'm quite happy with Kore 2.

BurtaN

 

In my opinion Brainspawn's Forte wins over Kore in live setups because you can create a setlist and have it switch between songs (or parts of songs) with no restrictions.

Kore has performance presets but these have the restriction of only allowing you to switch between them where everything is already in memory. For patches that contain large Kontakt sample sets that is going to be limited to the amount of memory you have available. Not great if you want to completely change your sounds during a set. If you want to do that then you will need to a load a new performance and kore does not have a utility that makes that easy. I know that a 3rd party utility has been created to help in this (setlist manger by Moss) but one thing that this will not do is check whether a reload of samples is actually necessary.

Forte sees a channel's current setup (a single instance of a VST) as a "Blob". If it decides that the blob, that needs to be loaded is identical to what is currently loaded, then it will not waste time replacing it. I think it does this by creating checksums for each blob and comparing them.

Ironically one piece of software where Forte fails in this approach is Kore itself as a VST. Kore seems to put some information into its blob that is different each time it is loaded, therefore forte detects this change and decides that it needs to be reloaded.

The bottom line for me is that playing in a covers band I have hundreds of songs in my repertoire and Forte makes it easy for me to pull a new setlist together in very little time. This new setlist will switch between songs or sections in the fastest and most efficient way.

I hope what I've said here makes some kind of sense and also that I've described what Forte does accurately. Please feel free to correct me in any aspects that I've got wrong (both Forte and Kore)

Regards
Martin

 

What's your email? I'm having a really hard time tracking down any decent information about this subject and you're the first person I've encountered who has both programs.

 

What you say makes sense .
But is Forte also as powerfull (and easy to use) in creating setups?

I agree that 128 Performance Presets are not many. That's the biggest problem in creating huge patches. The RAM limit at 3GB could be reached when you use lots of samples. But If you use several midi channels to control one Kontakt instance (or other sample players) you can use your RAM very efficiently.
What Kore needs is Bank-Select!

BurtaN

 

Is it true that Kore doesn't support multi-core processing? If that's the case, I can't see how anyone is using it as their live host. It might make sense to host multiple Kore instances in something like Logic but then you're not exactly buying Kore for live performing.

 

Forte

I also agree that Forte in some ways is a superior live host. In 2.0 it also includes support for racks, which represent the hardware in your setup. If your hardware changes, there is a method to convert your previous hardware configuration to a new or different one. Brainspawn also provides, for an additional fee, a very useful midi out module called Echo which is supported directly in Forte. The setlist management in Forte is awesome as mentioned with the most advanced handling of plugins and how they get loaded. You can add your own custom images to the live view for each song and the letters of the song title are huge.

Forte does not have dedicated hardware like a kore controller. But logically because this is absent, hardware support for midi gear is superior. Forte does not have a sounds browser or database for content. There are no controller pages either. And of course forte does not have a plugin version. Its good in a way because the software is kept live ready and the developers are very persistent in keeping Forte responsive and glitch free. Given that Forte supports multiple processors, its perhaps the best live host for performing musicians. Brainspawn only has to worry about Forte and Echo as products, so the focus is there. If something goes wrong, there is a crash reporter built in and updates address important things like plugin compatibility.

Compared to receptor, the only thing Forte has going against it is windows. Mac users can easily setup a bootcamp partition. The mac book pros with Core 2 Duo and up work well with Forte.

I have done the comparison before with these types of software in something called a live host matrix. It is the most advanced in its class and specific area of directly recalling and performing plugin configurations. It may seem a little old fashioned with so many mouse musicians and people doing sets with videogames and toys. But for the older style keyboard player that needs a host made for virtuosi and serious performing and fast recall, Forte is it. And its an active project.

I dig them both!

jonathan adams leonard

 

Yeah I'm definitely a player before anything else. I didn't know that Forte would function normally in bootcamp. That is really really good news. I think I'll buy Forte then. If I do buy Kore at some point it will definitely be as a luxury browser and librarian.

 

Mainstage

BTW don't forget to check out Mainstage 2. You have to get logic 9 to get it, but its the 'Apple' host. You mentioned VST above, but on the mac its really more so the Audio Unit. You get some great PM instruments with logic covering the basics; Clav, EP, and B3 run very efficiently...morphing drawbars is cool. Great vocoder as well. And NI just dumped their organ so take that as a sign.

 

I'm kind of married to an OSX only Pitch->USB 2.0 converter when I use my rig with a bass guitar so it would definitely make a lot of sense to stay on OSX if possible.

I took a glance at the Main Stage 2 manual. It looks really simple and it takes advantage of multi-core processors. I'll have to look into it more extensively.

 

I see that you come from the Mac side of town. I have no experience in this direction but am very interested to hear that there may be a way of getting Forte to run on a mac. I really thought that was impossible when I was checking out the possibility of getting a Mac for better stability. I didn't like the look of mainstage and in the end I invested on a rack pc (my laptop pc just wasn't stable enough) to run Forte (still waiting for the 64 bit version to come out of beta testing, as indeed I'm waiting for the 64 bit Kore).

I tried one gig with Kore as my main host and to my shame and the annoyance of the rest of the band, spent most of the evening rebooting

In my opinion, much as I love it, Kore is too many things to too many people. Forte is focussed on live performance and the Developer (Mike) is very fast to react to problems and release bug fixes (although it must be said that the vast majority of problems that occur are down to bugs in the VSTs themselves and not in Forte (and probably Kore for that matter as well).

I'm happy to take this offline if you prefer (martin.papier@yahoo.co.uk) but it might be more rewarding to keep this discussion in a forum (either here or Brainspawn's) so that more folk can chip in.

I propose that a "Live Performance" Sticky, or even better a sub forum, is created here.

Regards
Martin

 

I use Kore 2 live on stage every Sunday. I have proven it's stability over and over and over again. I absolutely love it. With 4gigs of ram, I can fully load it up with AK Pianos, VB3, Omnisphere, Kontakt samples, and have more than enough sounds for an entire day at my church. I have used other hosts, Mac and PC, and I can assure you that my MBP running a Kore 2 host is the best and most reliable setup I have ever had. Before playing live, if I feel that I have gone overboard on the amount of sounds loaded, I just do a quick run of an app called, "ifreemem" to tell me if I am overboard. If I am overboard on my ram usage, I go through all of my presets and eliminate the ones not needed. Generally I have an over abundance of things loaded that cover me from week to week, (I load everything that is good and may be used.) I just love the way I can layer sounds by just creating more "Performance Presets".

I have used Apple's Mainstage. While I absolutely love the things you can do with it, and the included sounds, I have been unable to switch to it, because in the past I had stability issues, although now I know why. There were 2 reasons for it's madness back when I used it. #1, I only had 2Gigs of ram and it just didn't like that. #2, the Express34 (eSATA) card I used to use with my MBP had some known issues with MBP's. Mainstage has incredible potential! Wow! nice interface and flexibility. I really should give it another chance since I have learned from my mistakes. Maybe someday, but for now I will stick with Kore 2.

 

Dang TylerB, I thought I was reading one of my posts! I too use Kore 2 Live in church with AP, VB-3, Omnipshere and Kontakt. (plus FM-8 and Absynth)

I too have had no problems. Plenty of power using XP w/4GB. I have learned a way to relax my memory demand by using performances with samples removed when not needed. I love the sound!

Geoelectro

 

I was a Forte user before and ran KORE for some time as the only plugin in Forte. I switched now for about 1 year fully to KORE. To overcome KOREs limitation of handling songs I wrote my own Setlist manager tool. You can get it for free from my website: mossgrabers.de

 

Long Post, Lots of Rig Info

First of all, I'd like to really thank everyone who's responded in this thread. I should have done a little more of my own homework before posting but I've since caught up a bunch. Still, I've found that most people using "performance" VST hosts are using them in considerably different contexts than the one that I'm intending to use mine for.

I'll give you a rundown of what my basic live setup is going to be looking like and maybe that'll help inform a recommendation. I'm definitely interested in general comments about all of these software hosts though.

Macbook Pro 2.4ghz 4GB RAM
Presonus Firestudio Mobile or
MOTU 828 Mk3 (have both, not sure which one will win out for the stage rig)
Komplete 6
Axe-Fx Ultra
Nord Modular G2 Engine
Novation Super Bass Station
QSC Power Amp (for bass guitar gigs)
Custom Bass Cabinet (15'' woofer, 6.5'' mid-driver, tweeter for bass-only gigs)

I don't really need any sort of sophisticated sequencing capabilities. I need a rack of synths in my MBP to trigger with a keyboard or with my bass guitar via the Keith McMillen StringPort Audio->USB 2.0 converter (really interesting product that I recommend checking out if you played a stringed instrument).

I've got a few interfaces but will probably go with the Presonus FireStudio Mobile on stage. I don't really need any more I/O than it offers, have found the drivers really stable, converters on par with if not better than the ones on my MOTU 828, and extensive DSP mixing is of pretty limited use to me since there aren't really any interfaces (besides the RME as far as I know?) that will let you change mixes and routing with MIDI program change messages.

The 828 Mk3 has some decent global compression and EQ options but it's pretty rare that I can use global EQ much at all, especially if I'm changing instruments mid-set. I just spend a decent amount of time in various registers playing various roles and usually tell the sound guy to keep things pretty transparent and cut whatever he thinks would be particularly boomy or ear-splitting in the room.

I'm also going to be using 3 supplemental hardware devices that I very much doubt I'll be able to replace with software on stage:

1) Axe-Fx Ultra - This pretty much changed my entire setup for both instruments and allowed me to start condensing everything into 1 rack. For one, it has the best amp modeling I've ever heard by a long shot. It serves as my bass preamp but I also use it for tube saturation on keyboard patches. It has a ton of really high quality effects and you can run up to 12 of them in series or divide that up into 4 parallel chains using its DSP. It handles the vast majority of my pitch shifting, modulation, and time-based effects.

2) Nord Modular G2 Engine - Yes, Reaktor is definitely a more flexible platform, but I'm fast with the G2 editor and I can have a latency-free hardware synth with pretty impressive capabilities. More importantly, I'll be able to build denser multi-timbral sounds without crashing my laptop on stage.

3) Novation Super Bass Station - Probably don't need this but I like having one analog mono synth. It sounds great too.

I don't really need the Komplete synths to send MIDI to my hardware. I've tried integrating hardware and software and while you can do it with audio, it's just a mess with MIDI. My arpeggiation needs are really going to pretty limited as the two groups I play with are very into the live electronic band aesthetic.

Still, I do need beat synced LFO's. I'll be using a Ploytech 34oneII tap-tempo controlled MIDI clock generator to feed both hardware and software.

OK... So given all that, I need a VST host for Komplete 6. I've looked into a bunch of them and it seems like Mainstage 2 and Kore 2 are going to be the best options considering what I've got going on.

Kore 2

Pros:

-Definitely the best/only option for a Komplete 6 librarian
-Komplete 6 has an absurd amount of sounds out of the box
-It's NI and I'm pretty much exclusively using NI soft synths
-Really dig the way that you can layer consolidate sounds
-Cool new presets to complement software I'll be using
-Bunch of effects (but very similar to Logic 9's offering)
-Hardware (personally irrelevant, not going to buy it or use it on stage)

Cons:

-No multicore support
-Apparently doesn't actually work with the vast majority of Komplete 6
-#2 profoundly limits its usefulness as a librarian at the moment
-Everyone on these forums is constantly looking for complicated workaround solutions to fairly fundamental issues
-If the idea is to get studio sounds organized on stage efficiently, is it really worth it to invest the time needed to learn all the idiosyncrasies of the software? I don't think my host needs are particularly complicated.
-Seems initially designed for stage use but is now considerably more popular as a studio tool, seems like the happiest users are using it with Komplete 5.
-Haven't confirmed this but have heard that it's a fairly CPU-hungry host?

Main Stage 2 (Logic Studio)

Pros:
-Glance through the manual gives the impression that it's REALLY simple (bonus tip: lots of guitarists are into it)
-Might save me a lot of time that I can spend programming and layering sounds
-Comes with some low overhead VSTi's that actually sound pretty good to me
-Multicore processor support
-Bunch of effects (but again, similar to Kore's offering)
-Logic Pro 9 (fairly unimportant, been a Digital Performer guy for way too long)
-You can load as many programs for each song/set as you need/have RAM enough for and access them with MIDI program change messages on a single channel pretty easily

Cons:
-Perhaps ultimately less powerful than Kore 2
-No librarian for Komplete 6
-Unclear how RAM is managed in performances?
-Layering sophistication immensely less powerful than Kore's

So what do you think?

 

I have not seen Mainstage 2 yet, but here are some annotations.

-Everyone on these forums is constantly looking for complicated workaround solutions to fairly fundamental issues
--> examples?

-Haven't confirmed this but have heard that it's a fairly CPU-hungry host?
--> At least channels which are bypassed don't use CPU. I did not realize a higher CPU use when used as a plugin than in standalone, but I didn't do a 1:1 comparison

-Multicore processor support (of Mainstage 2)
--> as NI always says that multicore processing increases the latency, how is this made in Mainstage 2?

BurtaN

 

With regards to the #1...

I was primarily referring to the 103 post thread on page 2, and the last two posts, each dated 2 weeks ago and a few hours apart. A lot of confused people have wasted a lot of time trying to get Kore 2 and Komplete 6 working. Posters gathered to rightfully grumble, and NI descends from the heavens with a list of recommended workaround posts that don't make make any use of the presets (presumably what a LOT of people bought KORE for), gets a response from this saying "hey guys the presets don't work." and there's no response for 2 weeks until... "Rummaging around on your site to discover this thread isn't acceptable."

That's definitely the most extreme example and clearly shows a lack of commitment to NI users. I mean, I can't even keep up with software updates for my Axe-Fx Ultra and it's a "boutique" digital amp modeler, not an alleged living musician studio musician solution from one of the biggest names in production software right now. I've never had any troubles with Digital Performer, bad drivers, anything really. It seems exceedingly unprofessional that NI won't give a release date either. What if you're supposed to be in the studio next week and have forked over a bunch of dough for a reliable instrument to bring with you, but it winds up completely nonfunctional until further notice? Still, most of these Kore threads here about other software incompatibility issues, installation issues, presets disappearing, etc.

If you're selling an expensive software package with a hardware controller, you are targeting current hardware users, DJ's, guitarists, and attempting to lure them to the dark side. Don't get me wrong here though, I still grin mischievously and make sure nobody's looking when I load some Massive and Reaktor patches in DP. These synths are really top notch software and I don't regret paying for them at all. I just really want to use them on stage but am faced with what seem to be two non-ideal options, one of which is, if you put consider that most people bought KORE for Komplete, simply broken and from a professional standpoint not worth buying until it's undeniably "fixed."

#2...

Hmm.. thanks. I'd definitely be interested in knowing some figures about that topic.

#3...

Yeah I have heard that as well, but it seems really strange that Forte, Logic, Cubase, etc. all utilize all the cores you've got around. I can also say that between here and KVR, there are quite a few people grumbling about two-three massive instances using about 70%+ of one of their CPU's in KORE. I actually already sent an email to Logic's support asking about this question and I'll let you guys know what they say.

I REALLY want to like Kore enough to buy it, I really do. But it just seems like such a disorganized project for NI and I'm not really getting the sense they they're on the hustle to rescue this marketing fiasco. I like NI a lot but I like things that I don't have to wast time on and start "fixing" right out of the box.

I'll likely go with Main Stage 2 but if NI gets this together I'll definitely revisit Kore.

 

The problems with Komplete 6 seem to be right, although I don't have experiences with it, because I'm still using Komplete 5
Indeed it's not very professional to release Komplete 6 before it's compatible with Kore 2. At least the next update promises to fix that...

BurtaN

 

I feel like my last post took a needlessly hostile tone towards Native Instruments. I should have done more homework earlier but I was really shocked to learn how long this fundamental problem has persisted for.

For those of you who do you use Kore live, how are you liking it and how are you using it?

 

As to #3- your DAW style hosts can handle core distribution due to generally higher latencies in general, plus they're using more resources. I'd like to know how Forte's handling it without sending CPU usage through the roof...

ew