Pro's / Con's .... Laptop for live use .... Touch Screen ? -or- No Touch Screen ?

[BenIfin]

Howdy all !

Am curious - if you were setting up a live Laptop based Guitar Sim Rig -or- know people that use one

-> would you want a Touch Screen or No Touch Screen ?

-> reasons-thoughts for / against ?

Thx

 

[T Gobbs]

I’d skip the laptop entirely if at all possible.

 

[Chocol8]

Touch screen is just another thing to cause problems on an already risky setup IMHO.

 

[BenIfin]

I’d skip the laptop entirely if at all possible.

Touch screen is just another thing to cause problems on an already risky setup IMHO.

I've "done" it with an iPad Air M1 in the past and it was solid as a rock ... but being iPadOS, there is a total lack of almost all decent guitar sims and efx ... and low RTL audio latency on iPad is still - relatively - very much worse / higher.

To get around the iPad M1 limitation, I am "considering" a Mackbook Air 13 inch M3 or M4 [ AU / iOS ] set up -however- they are not touch screen.

I cant imagine low latency and stability will be an issue.

But was keen to get peoples ideas / pro's / con's on *if* I did this, would they envisage a lack of Touch Screen as a positive or a negative ? and why ?

 

[T Gobbs]

@Digital Igloo

 

[Progressive_disclosure]

I’ve been using a touch screen Windows computer for work for a few years now, and for anything guitar plugin-related I would just rate it as an additional potential point of error.

There are very few UI’s, and I think I can generalize this to plugins as well, that are adequately adapted to touch based operations on MacOS or Windows. You CAN use touch on Windows but it’s not a tablet, so angle of interaction, distance with a keyboard in front etc is not the same thing as with a tablet. This I think one big reason why we haven’t seen MacBooks with touch screens yet. It’s really clunky to use in practice.

If you’ve decided to go computer-based I say go for a MacBook Air and try it out. You can still use Sidecar with an iPad as well to get the screen showing on an iPad and use touch if you’re really curious.

 

[newholland]

im not a modeler guy cause i need one good sound, no pedals, and essentially shoot for fail safe... but id avoid that like the plague. not that laptops arent stable or that it wont sound good, but theres just too many things that i wouldnt want to negotiate with a laptop running the show- not the first of which id feel like an egghead flipping it open to change sounds. 'office rok' r not us. theres so many good sounding, affordable, and durable hardware solutions- adding $2000 of delicate computing infrastructure to play a bar... woof. its not worth splitting that already split hair on dollar draft night.

 

[Sascha Franck]

-> would you want a Touch Screen or No Touch Screen ?

Yes. But very likely only for the initial setup.
I have already started a thread with my musings about a laptop based setup here, but in a nutshell, my hypothetical setup would likely include a Macbook Air, which I would only boot and then hide pretty much instantly. After that, I'd likely use an iPad as a Mainstage remote controller, but most likely I'd only call up the program and perhaps do some rough basic setup.

For all further finetunings, I'd add a MIDI rotary box.

-> reasons-thoughts for / against ?

I already cobbled together a setup (HX Stomp nested in a GT-1000 loop) allowing me to remote control all relevant parameters through a tablet running TouchOSC. And while I was extremely happy how it turned out technically, it wasn't great to deal with as soon as I wanted to make quick adjustments during the 2-3 shows that I used that setup for. I'm talking about the kind of adjustments you might want to do while you hold a note/chord (regardless whether it's corrective or creative). You're then standing there with the left holding a chord and with the pick in your right, trying to adjust things on a kinda crowded touchscreen with that very right hand - well, I found that to be a *very* unpleasant experience (and I even practised using that stuff at home). The lack of any haptic feedback is just plain bad IMO.
I then briefly tried the same setup with a Beeeh-riiiing-eeer BCR2000 (which I don't want to use as it's *way* too bulky) and it's been like night and day, IOW pretty much excellent.
So, in a nutshell: Any setup I could imagine would include a rotary controller of some sorts.

 

[DrewJD82]

My whole thing against touch screens is due to live use; I’ve never played a show where my hands weren’t soaked with sweat after the first song or two, I’d need to keep a pile of dry towels next to it to continuously wipe my hand on to make any adjustments and the second there’s a drop of water/sweat on the screen, I’d imagine they’d spaz out like my iPhone does when I’m trying to type and a drop of sweat lands on it.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Is there such thing as a silicon chipper? Because that's where my laptop rig would go.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Is there such thing as a silicon chipper? Because that's where my laptop rig would go.

I think I could just close my Macbook Air and simply put it in some little bag I have for it. Never gets more than lukewarm.

 

[JiveTurkey]

I think I could just close my Macbook Air and simply put it in some little bag I have for it. Never gets more than lukewarm.

YOU SEE SASCHA; MY REFERENCE TO CHIPPER WAS IN THE SAME VEIN AS TALKING ABOUT GARBAGE GUITARS WHERE THE BEST PLACE FOR THEM IS A WOOD CHIPPING DEVICE. IN THIS CASE; THE GARBAGE IS THE CONCEPT OF USING A LAPTOP AS A GIUTAR RIG AND ALL THE ASSOCIATED ANNOYANCES THAT WOULD COME WITH SAID SETUP. HENCE; THE SILICON CHIPPER WAS BORN TO ILLUSTRATE (APPARENTLY POORLY) A POINT. POINT BEING THAT A LAPTOP RIG IS DUMB.

 

[Sascha Franck]

YOU SEE SASCHA; MY REFERENCE TO CHIPPER WAS IN THE SAME VEIN AS TALKING ABOUT GARBAGE GUITARS WHERE THE BEST PLACE FOR THEM IS A WOOD CHIPPING DEVICE. IN THIS CASE; THE GARBAGE IS THE CONCEPT OF USING A LAPTOP AS A GIUTAR RIG AND ALL THE ASSOCIATED ANNOYANCES THAT WOULD COME WITH SAID SETUP. HENCE; THE SILICON CHIPPER WAS BORN TO ILLUSTRATE (APPARENTLY POORLY) A POINT. POINT BEING THAT A LAPTOP RIG IS DUMB.

I'm sorry I didn't get your reply right - but chances are that I still don't, so could you possibly use a bigger font size and maybe even use bold?

 

[JiveTurkey]

I'm sorry I didn't get your reply right - but chances are that I still don't, so could you possibly use a bigger font size and maybe even use bold?

YES

 

[Sascha Franck]

YES

Hm...

 

[SonVolt]

Nothing makes time slow down more than trying to use a Laptop or Tablet in a rush.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

I think the only way I could use a laptop to entertain a group of patrons at the local watering hole is to castrate myself with one.

 

[Chocol8]

YOU SEE SASCHA; MY REFERENCE TO CHIPPER WAS IN THE SAME VEIN AS TALKING ABOUT GARBAGE GUITARS WHERE THE BEST PLACE FOR THEM IS A WOOD CHIPPING DEVICE. IN THIS CASE; THE GARBAGE IS THE CONCEPT OF USING A LAPTOP AS A GIUTAR RIG AND ALL THE ASSOCIATED ANNOYANCES THAT WOULD COME WITH SAID SETUP. HENCE; THE SILICON CHIPPER WAS BORN TO ILLUSTRATE (APPARENTLY POORLY) A POINT. POINT BEING THAT A LAPTOP RIG IS DUMB.

Hmmmm. So what kind of chipper got your caps lock key?

 

[JiveTurkey]

8


Hmmmm. So what kind of chipper got your caps lock key?

THE CAPS KEY CHIPPER

 

[AlbertA]

YOU SEE SASCHA; MY REFERENCE TO CHIPPER WAS IN THE SAME VEIN AS TALKING ABOUT GARBAGE GUITARS WHERE THE BEST PLACE FOR THEM IS A WOOD CHIPPING DEVICE. IN THIS CASE; THE GARBAGE IS THE CONCEPT OF USING A LAPTOP AS A GIUTAR RIG AND ALL THE ASSOCIATED ANNOYANCES THAT WOULD COME WITH SAID SETUP. HENCE; THE SILICON CHIPPER WAS BORN TO ILLUSTRATE (APPARENTLY POORLY) A POINT. POINT BEING THAT A LAPTOP RIG IS DUMB.

Imagine running Reaper on a laptop AND using it also to drive video