Not counting the rack, power conditioner, external drives, cables, software, etc.

+Joe Maffei software add another 2 to 3 thousand lol he probably has Ravenscroft and komplete ultimate and those aren't cheap

Actually 4 macs bro.. u missed the one on stage that is mirroring plus the backup he mentions if the two off stage dies..

I doubt he’s worried about the cost of a rig. He’s been playing with Billy since at least 1998 when I first saw Billy Joel live. He had a very long pony tail back then. He must have been very young. 25+ years with the Billy Joel band, so I’m sure he’s paid well.

ummm he's rolling with Billy Joel methinks they know what they are doing..

It's a legitimate risk and my comment was based on actual concern for his system. In my career as an expert in server redundancy (with IBM) I have seen way too many systems fail due to ineffective backup or failover redundancy. The reason it's a risk is because it rarely or never happens, so people don't tend to plan for it, but if a rack did crash it would be devastating. I would actually like to hear from him how his team mitigates this risk (vs an internet troll) but I doubt they monitor this KZfaq thread.

+Jeff Lee lol troll nah but I have a degree from Berklee College of Music and I tour plus my college bud is a roadie with DMB.. I have personal experience and friends experiences.. the higher the level of tour the more anal we are back ups of backups ..

+Jeff Lee logged in under my music account..

In that case, Rosenthal switches to the Kurzweil as a sound generator.

Your band's Instagram account has 39 followers, and your Facebook 133 likes. When and where have you been playing to more than 10,000 people exactly?

I don't care if you are playing to 50 or 50,000, if you are a DJ or a sound engineer for a massive tour; if one does not incorporate some type of backup plan, be it a cold spare that is inches away to parallel systems, then they should revisit the way they do things. This is amazing work here.

If one goes down, there is a seamless switch to the other. Can't be too careful, especially on a gig this big.

+Michael Undas I think he would need to have the harddrives on stage too since thunderbolt has a limited distance and this would take too much space or add complexity on stage. He's using the computers because they have better sounds, he has gigabytes of samples on the computers, this can't be done with the keyboards only. He can play the keyboards with similar sounds and he said he has them as backup this way but they'll be lower quality. Yes extra computers off stage act as backups, anything can happen. I don't know, $20,000 of equipement is nothing, one projector can cost over $100,000. Jordan Rudess doesn't have anyone that will kick his ass if something fails...

+Richard Hachem ultralite's don't have thunderbolt right? where's the thunderbolt

First off the setup is best kept off stage so his tech can access it if there is a problem while he plays. Secondly the fact that you keep asking why this & why that means you are far behind on technology & how we do things. This is a 2 year old video so wow

@@RichardHachem Exactly what Hachem says. Sideman is a different gig than lead performer. A hired gun is supposed (and paid) to be paranoid. If Slash breaks a pedal, eh, it's only rock'n'roll, the show will go on with slightly crappier sounds.

I'd guess Billy wants the keyboard sounds to sound close to the records. When was the last time you programmed a K2xxx or had to suffer through loading a bunch of samples through its SCSI port? Great machines, but I'd take programming sounds and performances on a laptop rather than on that 256x64 display any day - let alone haul around a SCSI drive in 2018.

@@TobiaTesan Agreed. I love my K2600 and K2661, but that display is like something from the 80s.

If you’re playing keys for Billy Joel Redundancy, multiple backups, and any/every fail safe possible are absolutely necessary. They weren’t kidding about “stuck notes” happening. While it’s very rare, if it does happen it ruins the song and is very embarrassing even playing in a bar band. It’d be a disaster playing with Billy Joel in an arena show. He knows what he’s doing and he can afford it too. So by all means say geek out.

@@Cr16604 Thx God we have Gigperformer! I really know how powerfull can be a soft synth setup. Posibilities are endless, but man, Gigperformer is far away from mainstage. Even so ill always be a hardware fan. My setup: Yamaha Genos 76 for piano patches, a motif xf6 on the top for synth sounds, strings etc etc etc.... Two hands, I dont need anymore.

Rosenthal is apparently one of those guys that likes multiple keyboards instead of one keyboard with 343878 splits. In which case, I can't say it doesn't make sense to make them dumb controllers and have the actual sound generation 100% on the rack.