Gig Performer® is an audio plugin host application to allow you to use your Windows PC or Mac along with an audio interface for live music performance. Whether you’re part of a band or a solo artist you can use Gig Performer® to manage all the sounds and/or effects processing you need when you’re on stage.

Gig Performer® provides a free 14 day trial. In trial mode, Gig Performer® will be fully functional for 14 days except for occasional deliberate audio drop-outs during which moments the screen will briefly flash red.
To remove these drop-outs, please purchase the full version. Download Gig Performer here.

Note that the trial version is intended solely to help you determine whether Gig Performer is suitable for your needs and because a trial version is available, Deskew Technologies, LLC does not offer refunds for purchases.

Gig Performer® is designed to run on both Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows so the user can work in whichever environment is most familiar and comfortable.

Gig Performer® supports VST and VST3 plugins (Windows) and VST, VST3 and AU plugins (Mac).

Of course you can! Gig Performer® has a full OSC implementation, so you can use popular Android or iOS applications such as Lemur, TouchOSC or Oscar to control your effects from your tablet or smartphone. You can even control your effects from a Web browser.

A quick internet search will turn up numerous sites on which you can find and download many free VST and AU (Mac only) synth and effect plugins. See this blog article to get started: Top websites for free audio plugins and how to use them in Gig Performer®.

Variations allow you to instantly change the front panel settings of a rackspace. For example, if you have a single rack containing a collection of audio plugin effects such as phaser, flanger, chorus and echo, then different variations would allow you to instantly change multiple parameters so you can switch from just phaser to phaser+flanger+chorus or change the phaser rate, flanger depth and chorus width in one go, rather than having to press multiple pedals and/or adjust multiple dials. Many songs use the same audio plugins connected together in the same way but with slightly different parameters so variations allow you to reuse the same plugins without needing more memory to hold them.

You can organize rackspaces and variations into songs suitable for use in a session or show. Each song consists of one or more song parts and each song part refers to a specific rackspace/variation combination. Widgets values in rackspaces can be temporarily overridden by song parts. In this way, you can easily reuse your rackspaces for different songs and/or song parts, each one appropriately tweaked as required.

The Rig Manager is used to manage a separation of your hardware (keyboards, MIDI controllers, MIDI pedal boards etc) and your rackspace design. This allows you to quickly replace one physical device with another, for example, when you are on tour and your keyboards are backlined. Instead of having to learn how to program or configure keyboards or controllers with which you are not familiar, you can train Gig Performer very quickly to recognize what MIDI events they generate to allow you to use different “rigs” at different shows.

Read more about the Rig Manager here.

With apologies, this question, although asked often, is somewhat meaningless.

The latency of any system is a function of the latency of the audio interface plus the latency implied by the sample buffer size divided by the sample rate specified in the application (see table below). So if you set the sample rate of ANY application to 44,100Hz (say) and the buffer size to 128 (say), that application will add 2.90 ms latency.

It doesn’t matter whether one is running a toy computer or the fastest supercomputer in the world!

Perhaps a better question to ask is, “Can I get up on stage, perform in real-time and do a 3 hour show, switching from one set of sounds to another on the fly, turning on/off or adjusting effects instantly and not get stressed out?”

THAT (among MANY other things) is what Gig Performer brings to the table.

Gig Performer does have a tool to let you measure the actual (as opposed to the reported) latency of your audio interface.

We know people are very interested in such things but we worry that focusing on such things just gets in the way of actually playing. Wearing my musician’s hat, my own position is, if I can play and not notice any delay or softness, that’s all that matters.

Of course you can! Gig Performer® has a full OSC implementation, so you can use popular Android or iOS applications such as Lemur, TouchOSC or Oscar to control your effects from your tablet or smartphone. You can even control your effects from a Web browser.

There are many well-known musicians that use Gig Performer. Check out our Gig Performer in Action page, community forum thread, or blog article to see some of the musicians that use Gig Performer.

Gig Performer® provides a free 14 day trial. In trial mode, Gig Performer® will be fully functional for 14 days except for occasional deliberate audio drop-outs during which moments the screen will briefly flash red.
To remove these drop-outs, please purchase the full version. Download Gig Performer here.

Note that the trial version is intended solely to help you determine whether Gig Performer is suitable for your needs and because a trial version is available, Deskew Technologies, LLC does not offer refunds for purchases.

Yes, as strong believers in education, Gig Performer is available with a 50% discount to students and full-time teachers at accredited schools and universities.

Interested customers will need to provide evidence of their affiliation with the school or university. We regret that this discount is not available to private music teachers.

The discount is available for new purchases only. It does not apply to upgrades and cannot be used in conjunction with any other discounts.

Eligibility requirements

• Students currently enrolled full-time at a school, college or university
• Teachers employed full-time or part-time (teaching at least 20 hours/week) by a school, college or university in any field of study
• Independent professional music teachers

Proof of eligibility

1. Students and teachers with an affiliation to an accredited school, college or university

• A dated student or faculty ID card that shows your name
• or an email request that comes from your school’s email domain

2. Independent professional music teachers

• Link to your website showing that teaching music is your primary activity rather than a minor adjunct to being a recording and/or performing artist
  (By primary we mean that approximately 6 hours/weekday are spent teaching students)
• Email request must come from the same domain

Please do not submit paystubs or anything that contains private or confidential information.

Click here to submit your request using our online support system.

If you downloaded the new Deskew version by mistake, you can uninstall it and download the PA legacy version from this website to return to 4.5.8

There are no cross-grade plans available for users of Plugin Alliance Locked edition. Customers using this edition will have to purchase new licenses directly from Deskew Technologies. Please visit the Gig Performer Store page for pricing information and ordering.

Deskew Technologies announced Gig Performer 4 on March 1st 2021 and released it on June 1st, 2021. Customers who purchased Gig Performer 3 from Deskew Technologies on or after March 1st 2021 were entitled to upgrade to Gig Performer 4 without any upgrade fees. Consequently, the same rules apply to PA customers who purchased GP3 on or after March 1st, 2021, i.e, they will simply pay the difference between what they paid for GP3 and the retail non-discounted price at which Deskew Technologies sells GP4. See the previous FAQ for details on this process.

PA customers who purchased GP3 before March 1st 2021 are not eligible for this offer and will find it less expensive to simply purchase a new GP4 license.