For my technopop act, I want to route vocals through Ableton for pitch shifting effects. (So I don’t have to buy a VT-4 ) Since it’s going to be playing backing tracks anyway. (Otherwise I would leave the laptop at home, because fuck computers!)
Should I A) get the cheapest okay-ish interface just so I can have that mic output and single extra input (seems they start at 2 inputs) and then route that into the Digitone, or should I B) step it up to a 4-input interface and have the Digitone going into that?
Pros of A: Cheap
Cons of A: Those basic ones have RCA outputs for some reason.
Pros of B: No chance of vocals cutting out due to forgotten per-pattern input levels on Digitone
Cons of B: No ability to use Digitone FX on vocals (not really a big con)
I don’t own one, but check out the Steinberg UR series. Fairly inexpensive and decent preamps plus it’s class compliant so you can use it with an iOS device if you want.
Just be wary of latency when you’re running vocals through it in a live setting.
And I’m sure it has some built-in monitoring that you’ll have to disable if you want the audience to only hear the affected signal and not the monitored one as well. It was a PITA trying to figure this out with my other interfaces. I wanted to hard auto-tune a vocal and hearing both signals was driving me insane. Made me sing worse than I already do.
I wouldn’t go for option B unless you have an interface with more than 2 outputs, because the sound engineer will want control over your sound as much as possible, ideally you’d want to give them your vocal mix as one channel (or two if you want stereo FX), and DN as two channels, and two channels for your backing tracks. Maybe one more channel for kick if that’s possible would help them make you sound great. That’s 7 outputs ideally you want to send to front of house, 4 if you’re happy to lose stereo.
I’d look at getting the behringer UMC 8 channel interface. The converters aren’t amazing but definitely good enough for live sound. 8 inputs, 8 outputs, 2 headphone outputs so you can have a different mix in your ears…
I’ve been using my behringer on stage for 4 years and it’s never let me down, and I’ve dropped it at least twice.
Latency is an issue if your laptop isn’t up to it, but if the only effects are auto tune/pitch shifting you should be alright… running synths/high quality saturation etc could start cpu problems.
Good luck!
Edit: The VT-4 is super super fun though and could make your set up easier and no latency issues…
) Since it’s going to be playing backing tracks anyway. (Otherwise I would leave the laptop at home, because fuck computers!)