AW: minimizing gear with-laptop or floor harware?

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

> getting a laptop to replace my,edps,and mpc1000 sampler with 
> mobius and (x?) software to replace the MPC1000(please 
> recomend me something similar),though i would still have to 
> have a mixer and soundcard.
> or going all floor harware,no racks or mixer by using floor 
> efx and something like the boss RC-50 it has a looper,simple 
> drum loops, guitar and mic in,and stereo outs straight into 
> the 2 speakers.Now since i havent use any of these 2 
> variables which in your opinion would be more 
> reliable,advantages,drawbacks?

Option "Laptop plus":
Using Mobius will give you all the (looping) power you have now, only times
sixteen and script language and...note that there are some special (esp.
loop4) functions that still have to be implemented in Mobius.

As for the MPC1000: I'd suggest Kontakt, then suggest Ableton Live as a
host. Depending on the way you're working with your MPC, you can then even
skip using Kontakt or just use Battery instead.

I don't understand why you'd still need a mixer. Using an interface which 
is
powerful enough should solve this (think fireface400 with its standalone
mixer function).

What you'll need however is at least a foot controller (FCB1010 etc.) and
perhaps a fader box.

Advantages: very flexible, only one pass of A/D-D/A conversions, the setup
topology can be changed by simply loading a new file into your application.

Option "all floor":
Floor setups tend to lack when it comes to signal routing flexibility. 
Also,
if you normally use a MPC to do your drums, I doubt that you'll be happy
with the RC50's internal drums (and with its looping if you're coming from
the EDP for that matter). Which effects were you looking at? One before the
RC50 (which would then only affect guitar) and one after the RC50? Or
something else? You see, flexibility of routing is greatly reduced here...

Advantages: you could just mount everything onto a wooden board with two
cables going in on one side and two cables coming out on the other side and
a power strip at the top. Setup essentially boils down to putting the thing
onto the floor and connecting five cables.

        Rainer