Using SFZ Player LIVE...what do I need?

Greetings,


I've been playing keys for a long time, but never live until now, and rather than using my MIDI controller with a sound module, I would like to use it with soundfont players and softsynths (mainly the SFZ) with a laptop for live use, but being new to this, I don't know exactly what I need. I have a netbook, but it's not powerful enough. I don't want to do anything fancy with it...just want to use it like a sound module. I know how to use the SFZ player now (both standalone and within Sonar X1, but I'd like to use it both ways depending on what I'm doing), so I don't think I'll need a lot of help there, but I need a simple rundown of everything I'll need to use it in a live setting, including: 


- Laptop specs ideal for using it with no latency


- Any other software/hardware I'd need


- Should the line be going directly out of the laptop's headphone jack or out of an interface, and what kind of interface would be ideal? 


I'm such a noob, I don't even know what ASIO means. But I'm not looking to do anything complicated like I said, so I just need a little help to simplify things. Thanks!


- Freeze

A good interface should help with latency.  RME is a good low latency choice, but is rather expensive.  Other, cheaper interfaces will have to be tried out to see if you can "play" live w/ them.  Using your internal card (the headphone output) will probably suffer from lag - but as above you'll want to check for yourself.

If you are playing the sfz live, any old DAW will do - or even the player in stand alone mode if it will do that.  Otherwise, SONAR is a good candidate as a DAW wrapper, tho most people use LIVE for live stuff (tho that is more of a DJ kind of tool).

ASIO is a type of driver that many interfaces can use to "talk" to the computer(along w/ WDM, the old microsoft driver).  The interface makers write the software using the ASIO specs so it will communicate w/ the computer w/o a lot of the problems if each interface had its own standard.

There should be no problem using a laptop as a software player, as long as you don't load it up w/ a lot fo other things - playing back a lot of audio tracks, playing several synths at once and dumping a bunch of effects on your audio.  That is what eats up CPU, not  the SFZ player.  For that, all you have to worry about is the latency.

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