Robert Wilson

What's your method of doing that?

Getting Mainstage to trigger MIDI regions. I haven't been able to do it to any useable degree so far.

Just to wrap this thread up after another day of tinkering with IAC, I'm satisfied that two tracks with automatic program changes is now working reliably well so I think I'll restrict myself to a maximum of two for live performance. Once I go to 3 tracks or more it becomes very flaky and unreliable. Thanks all for your help, this old dog has learned a couple of new tricks along the way.

Apologies, I worded it poorly. What I meant was, all 3 tracks changed as expected in the first and second set of program changes. If I copy-paste the first set of 3 changes so that I now have it switching to one set then back again, all 3 sets work as expected. However, if edit remote 1 to send a different prog change in the 3rd set of changes, it seems to clash with the expected change from remote 2, which is now ignored. Here's a screenshot. I expected the highlighted region to have sent prog 1 to track 2. Instead it's still on prog 102. -Update- If I leave it looping it sometimes picks up the change and sometimes not. The issue seems to be limited to track 2 for now. The others are working consistently.

OK, this is continues to be weirdly *almost* working as hoped. I started a new project from scratch and followed these steps. It works fine for all three tracks with 2 prog change events on each. When I add a third set, if I'm switching back to the first set of 3 prog. changes, it's fine. e.g: remote 1 sends changes to prog 0 then prog 101 then back to prog 0. remote 2 sends changes to prog 1 then prog 102 then back to prog 1. remote 3 sends changes to prog 2 then prog 103 then back to prog 2. The weirdness starts if I try to make the 3rd program change something else, e.g. if I try to change remote 1's 3rd event to prog 4. Track 1 now changes to prog 4 but track 2's change gets ignored and stays on prog 102 instead of switching.

Here's a more detailed breakdown of what is sort of working and what isn't. In the first image shown the set up is: Track 1, Software inst: MIDI port - IAC Bus 1, MIDI Channel 1 in and out, rec enabled. Track 2, Software inst: MIDI port - IAC Bus 2, MIDI Channel 1 in and out, rec enabled. Track 3, External MIDI: MIDI port (in and out) IAC Bus 1, MIDI Channel 1 in and out. Track 4, External MIDI: MIDI port (in and out) IAC Bus 2, MIDI Channel 1 in and out. It has these program changes: Track 3: Pos. 1 1 2, ch 1, Val 0; Pos 161 1 2, ch 1, Val 101. Track 4: Pos 1 1 3, ch 1, Val 1; Pos 161 1 3, ch 1, val 102. The above seems to work around 9 times out of 10. Around 1 time out of 10 only 1 channel will pick up the program change. I still haven't quite figured out what causes it to do this. Anyway, I could probably work with it if that was the only issue. Unfortunately it starts to break down if I add another tracks with IAC Bus 3 as the port. In the second image I've added the 3rd track but haven't yet set up IAC Bus 3 in the environment. At this point it still works. I then add IAC Bus 3 and track 6, which is assigned to IAC 3. Now track 3 picks up program changes for track 2 and track 2 does nothing. I'll keep tinkering and update the thread if I make any further progress.

Thanks, I just gave that a try and it's now working intermittently which is at least an improvement. I hadn't realised they needed record enabled to receive MIDI. Now I have them both working at some events but not others so will need to look into that but think it might be something to do with the clueless way I've set up the IAC buses.

"you can put all yur tracks into a summing stack and highlight the summing track - it will distribute events it receives to its sub tracks (even if they’re not rec enabled)." Thank you, I'll give that a try. Would that mean just using the one IAC bus and selecting different MIDI channels for each sub track?

I also asked about this on LUG forum but maybe someone here knows if there's a way for multiple tracks to switch channel strip settings automatically? I'm trying to set up a project for live performance that automatically switches channel strip settings but can only get it to work on one track at a time. I've saved the channel strip settings as performances, set up an IAC bus and and put the program change events on an external track. This worked well for switching channel strips on one track back and forth. After a lot frustration, I managed to get it working on a second track. This involved creating a second instance of IAC bus (which may be completely the wrong way to go about it). The problem I have with this set up is the events are only picked up on the highlighted track in the arrange window. This means only one track at a time will switch channel strips automatically. I've tried moving the program change events in the timeline in case they were clashing but that doesn't appear to be the issue. This is the current set up. Track 1 switches channel strips when highlighted, as does track 2, but not both together.

If the CPU read out is turning red you have a problem. I had to bring the complexity of my concert down, bit by bit, until it more or less stopped happening. That was the only way I could get a reasonably reliable concert.

I had a similar problem and it drove me nuts. Assuming your concert loads ok (mine didn't) I'd suggest troubleshooting by removing your patches one by one to see if any of them are causing the problem.

I gave up using Loopback because it seemed so buggy so I'm guessing, yes, possibly a bug.

Well, fingers crossed and all the best. Hopefully just pre-match nerves! A bit of a mixture - you can hear some of it at: http://abelsoul.co.uk (hasn't been updated for wee while) Stereo in Glasgow: http://www.stereocafebar.com/ Nice little venue and the resident sound engineer is very thorough. I have to say (in a transparently desperate attempt to drag this back on topic) that getting through the gig without MainStage balking was a huge relief. I'll certainly consider using it for our next gig.

Good luck! Just noticed you're in Scotland - where's the gig?

Well, we had our gig last night and MS held up OK.