Gig Performer is wild!
Just look at this Year in Review https://gigperformer.com/retrospective-2025-year-in-review
Just look at this Year in Review https://gigperformer.com/retrospective-2025-year-in-review
Cantabile vs Gig Performer vs ??? and some initial thoughts after some experimenting
- Thread starter Jim Soloway
- Start date
BenIfin
Shredder
- Messages
- 1,622
Hey dhjdhj !
See my post here re: NDSP X Plugins and reported Gig 5 Latency / Sample reporting.
This was simply feeding my Laptop Interface Input a Click Track and running it through an empty GP5 Rack with just the I/O's connected and then feeding my Laptop Interface Input the same Click Track and running it through a 20 Block Rack with the Rabea X Plugin open and running.
Both tracks recorded and perfectly aligned to zero in Audacity with Latency compensation off.
In short, the NDSP Rabea X Plugin "adds" 0.08 ms of latency ie: within the margin of hardware / software errror ... nothing like the 175 Samples / 1.8ms GP5 is showing.
Either Gig Perf 5 is reporting the wrong NDSP Latency for the NDSP Rabea X Plugins (?) -or- the NDSP Rabea X Plugin is "sending" the wrong Latency data to GP5 (?)
Ben
Please post this to our community forums so the entire support and dev team can see it.
Jim Soloway
Groupie
- Messages
- 69
After all of the progress I've made in the last week or so (much of it thanks to the help I've gotten here), I wanted to bring this thread back both to report my results and ask some more questions.
First, I settled for the time being on working with both Reaper and Cantabile. That is not at all a judgement about Gig Performer (and I really appreciate the help that came from one of the Gig Performer developers. I don't think I could have gotten this far without that assistance). The only reason I went with Cantabile is that they have a lite version that's free and my 14 day demo of Gig Performer was expiring. I don't really want to spend money until I know what my actual path forward will be. And that brings me to my first question (or thought): do I really need a program like Cantabile or Gig Performer given that now that I have gotten past my latency issues, I am able to get the same results in Reaper? What is the benefit of the Cantabile/Gig Performer over just doing it in my DAW? The only things that come to mind are a very attractive and informative work flow in both Cantabile and Gig Performer and, I suspect, a MUCH lower hardware overhead.
Between age and some health issues, I have no idea if I will ever be playing out live again so this next part may well be irrelevant, but I'm still really curious how I can make this work for me if I do decide to go back to gigging. I have the advantage of only really needing a single tone when I gig. And this setup gives me a really glorious version of that tone. My first thought is a really small laptop (I had no idea that there is still such a thing as an 8" laptop) and a really small interface like a Zoom AMS-22 with the output from the Zoom going to small FRFR powered cab. The Zoom provides control of both the input gain and the output volume.
The setup I'm running now is as follows:
a standalone version of the graphic EQ from Reaper
to S-Gear running the Duke model set for clean tones with no effects and no speaker sims
to the Pecheneg tremolo
to the Lancaster Pulse IR loader running in stereo
to the Tal Reverb 2
to the Klanghelm MJUCjr variable compressor
The setup is identical on both Cantabile and Reaper and playing live, they sound incredibly close to identical.
The guitar I'm playing a heavily modified Fender Mustang with a Lindy Fralin hum cancelling P90
And here's what it sounds like.
First, I settled for the time being on working with both Reaper and Cantabile. That is not at all a judgement about Gig Performer (and I really appreciate the help that came from one of the Gig Performer developers. I don't think I could have gotten this far without that assistance). The only reason I went with Cantabile is that they have a lite version that's free and my 14 day demo of Gig Performer was expiring. I don't really want to spend money until I know what my actual path forward will be. And that brings me to my first question (or thought): do I really need a program like Cantabile or Gig Performer given that now that I have gotten past my latency issues, I am able to get the same results in Reaper? What is the benefit of the Cantabile/Gig Performer over just doing it in my DAW? The only things that come to mind are a very attractive and informative work flow in both Cantabile and Gig Performer and, I suspect, a MUCH lower hardware overhead.
Between age and some health issues, I have no idea if I will ever be playing out live again so this next part may well be irrelevant, but I'm still really curious how I can make this work for me if I do decide to go back to gigging. I have the advantage of only really needing a single tone when I gig. And this setup gives me a really glorious version of that tone. My first thought is a really small laptop (I had no idea that there is still such a thing as an 8" laptop) and a really small interface like a Zoom AMS-22 with the output from the Zoom going to small FRFR powered cab. The Zoom provides control of both the input gain and the output volume.
The setup I'm running now is as follows:
a standalone version of the graphic EQ from Reaper
to S-Gear running the Duke model set for clean tones with no effects and no speaker sims
to the Pecheneg tremolo
to the Lancaster Pulse IR loader running in stereo
to the Tal Reverb 2
to the Klanghelm MJUCjr variable compressor
The setup is identical on both Cantabile and Reaper and playing live, they sound incredibly close to identical.
The guitar I'm playing a heavily modified Fender Mustang with a Lindy Fralin hum cancelling P90
And here's what it sounds like.
Last edited:
laxu
Rock Star
- Messages
- 8,508
VST hosts are more purpose built to be performance tools, whereas DAWs are recording first.
A DAW could do largely the same thing, and there are DAWs that are more user friendly than Reaper. A VST host can still be a good idea if it makes it easier to manage for live playing. E.g MIDI mapping can often be quite buried in DAWs and things can get messy with a recording-oriented UI.
