Tycho

"...I learned a lot touring with Alt-J and seeing their setup. Their production was beyond anything I've ever encountered as a musician and it was really inspiring to see such a complex system and so many people working to bring it all together and present a seamless performance each night. That's what initially got me thinking about rebuilding our set and the loss of the laptops and a month off seemed like a good opportunity to make it happen.

For the benefit of any other musicians out there I thought I'd outline the basics of the new system. For the audio portion we're running two Macbook Pros, each with a set of RME UCX interfaces running in tandem via ADAT connected to them (we were previously using 2 single RME Fireface 800's). The ADAT tandem mode allows for more inputs and outputs per computer in one rackspace. The first machine handles playback of automation, SMPTE timecode for video sync, MIDI sync, and our in ear monitoring system (Sennheiser G3 IEM). The second machine is linked to the first via MIDI sync and handles all input channels, virtual instrument hosting and effects processing. Both machines are running Reaper with each project in its own tab. We were running into a lot of resource limitations when the entire set was on one computer so the only way to open things up and allow us to expand the set was to distribute the load across multiple machines. I also just switched to an API 3124+ for the front end of the input laptop as it fits 4 preamps into one rackspace, and it sounds amazing. We run the bass, guitars, and synths through it which lessens the amount of plugins we have to use to get a good tone inside the box."