mainstage peformance issues

buffer size 128, safety buffer on.

event1:

19:53:xx mainstage inexplicably dropped playback completely and went into overload during a part that it never overloads, so it was a random occasion (+ CPU was nowhere near maxed out)

 

event2:

random inexplicable CPU spike, again, for the life of me i cannot repeat that and that song never stutters - it was a onetime occasion.

 

This is incredibly hard to fix because i literally can't figure out what is causing it and it doesn't happen consistently.

 

most of the time, the set will play through without any issues. Then now and then it has a meltdown like this.

 

i checked CPU usage and it's at about 20%, i doubt the peak that brought it to knees would fare any better in a different scenario.

 

Mainstage 3.4.3. Same s#!+ happened on 3.4.2.

 

I dont remember this happening on macOS 10.14.4. Maybe i should revert back? how do i even do that?

I can wipe it and reinstall it without much fuzz, because it's my portable for mails and live performance, mac mini is where the main s#!+ happens.

any takes?

well, if you use Time Machine, it'll make, let's call it "stage" backups on the local machine even if the TimeMachine device isn't hooked up. that could be one *possible* cause. it's really hard to diagnose this kind of situation when the machine also does double-duty for email and other "sync constantly in the background" kinds of tasks - you really want *none* of those running while working in MS...

 

my MS machine does not do email. Yes, that's actually a pain in the backside. Time Machine is set to "manual" so that it never thinks middle of a gig is good time to start an interim backup...

I don't (didn't) use time machine tho, or any scheduled background tasks, mail is via browser.

 

I've since wiped it and installed ONLY mainstage and 10 3rd party plugs and nothing else and it seems to have remedied it.

 

A shell script that would disable everything in one pass would be useful (BT, wifi, etc)

FROM SYSTEM.LOG

 

Jul 26 22:20:26 Simons-MacBook-Pro Spotlight[306]: assertion failed: 18G84: libxpc.dylib + 90677 [7DEE2300-6D8E-3C00-9C63-E3E80D56B0C4]: 0x89

Jul 26 22:20:27 Simons-MacBook-Pro diagnosticd[527]: Posting empty stream filter

Jul 26 22:20:27 Simons-MacBook-Pro diagnosticd[527]: no EOS device present

Jul 26 22:20:27 Simons-MacBook-Pro diagnosticd[527]: allowing Console (525) access to stream due to admin status

Jul 26 22:20:27 Simons-MacBook-Pro diagnosticd[527]: Posting stream filter: "{

global = 30064771083;

}"

Jul 26 22:20:27 Simons-MacBook-Pro diagnosticd[527]: System mode client started - Console (525) - mode: 0xb, filter: ""

Jul 26 22:20:34 Simons-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent): Unknown key for integer: _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit

 

—————————

FROM Mac Analytics Data

 

22:20:26.595536 +0200 Unknown com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.assumes.failure

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22:20:26.598932 +0200 Spotlight com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.coreservices.applaunch

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22:20:26.610257 +0200 Spotlight com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.spotlight.search-session

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22:20:26.650992 +0200 Spotlight com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.open.application

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This wasn't even a CPU spike and PLAYBACK DROPPED.

 

I have a concert tomorrow lol i can't rollback to 10.4.4 TODAY. Christ this is unbelievable

 

This cannot be my fault since this is a FRESH INSTALL wtih only mainstage from the app store and 10 plugins installed!!

 

This is a sick joke f*%@

 

CPU was at 10% from mainstage, and when playback dropped it jumped to 17% (TOTAL! system+user), fans didn't even ramp up they were at 2000rpm.

 

christ

its spotlight, everytime this happens its f$@%ing spotlight.

 

Mojave is dumb enough not to disable indexing in the background when you do fullscreen mainstage. Jesus christ.

I’ve disabled Spotlight (using a Terminal command) on my MainStage gigging partition for this reason. However, I’m not running Mojave....is it possible to use a Terminal command to disable Spotlight in Mojave? That’d be your best bet.

I’ve disabled Spotlight (using a Terminal command) on my MainStage gigging partition for this reason. However, I’m not running Mojave....is it possible to use a Terminal command to disable Spotlight in Mojave? That’d be your best bet.

 

I did! Had to disable System Integrity Protection.

 

So far so good, i hope this was it.

I never thought about a separate gigging partition - good idea. Since this system i setup is clean i can just make another one.

 

You shouldnt have to disable spotlight on a new apple computer running apple software in order for it to work properly though, how bad of an overlook is that?!

Yeah, it’s a ridiculous oversight by Apple...and one with potentially catastrophic ramifications, as you found out.

 

I’ve run “gig” and “everyday” partitions on my MacBook Pro machines for years and love it. I can install the latest OS and other bits and pieces on the “everyday” partition and then use this to test with MainStage. My “gig” partition is still running High Sierra because every new iteration of MacOS comes with more system processes etc.

 

There’s also a great little utility you can use to quickly boot from one partition to the other called QuickBoot. I use a single-character admin password so that booting between partitions is quick and painless.

nice. Thanks for the tips, will definitely do that

quickboot looks cool.

i already use a 4-character single hand gesture password

s#!+, i had to restart the machine and afterwards the disable spotlight command didn't work, and the playback dropped, fortunately, towards the end of the concert.

Bloody hell. That’s ridiculous

yeah, i'm trying to rollback to 10.4.4, make a separate mainstage partition and also found a "disable lots of macOS background s#!+" script, which i'll try to load as a startup script. hopefully that will work.

 

I'm also calling apple support today since laptop is half a year old and should probably work

no matter what i do i get dropped playback

That’s a serious bummer. I had some similar things happen with my 2010 mbp also in terms of mysterious kernel processes chewing up the cpu. I never really figured it out. Spotlight is a good bet. I don’t seem to have that problem with my 5,1

 

I am inclined to think there might be some mbp power management stuff kicking in also.

i talked with apple support and they told me i have to replicate the issues on an absolute barebones system running a stock patch. (which is not far from what i'm running now), hopefully i'll be able to reproduce it.

so i tried on 10.14.1 with mainstage 3.3.2, and the same issue remains.

 

Last try: 10.13.16 high sierra with Mainstage 3.4.3, with rebuilded project.

 

If that doesn't work, i'm moving my live setup to Logic Pro.

Looks like mainstage loses access to the full available CPU power for a period doesn't it, as all the plugins listed on the CPU log spike in proportion to each other.

 

As a quick fix, Have you tried the low res mode and running project in windowed in edit mode?

 

Also, any pattern to the spikes?

hi, updates: no CPU spikes (clean system with everything disabled) but playback still drops.

 

i've just tried lowres mode and running windowed, will probably run the live show TODAY like that and hope it doesn't drop playback.

Ploki, can you post or link to the "disable lots of macOS background s#!+" script? I’m curious to see it.

Ploki, can you post or link to the "disable lots of macOS background s#!+" script? I’m curious to see it.

sure, here:

https://gist.github.com/pwnsdx/d87b034c4c0210b988040ad2f85a68d3

 

I advice against it tho.

 

I manually clean stuff up in LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons, but then IMEmojiFunction or something like that started to go insane and produced 100 crashes per minute in the background - not a lot of toll on the CPU, but the console looked like a warzone.

 

IN any case, tried running Edit mode and low-res on the concert yesterday and playback dropped anyway.

The good thing is, it works normally after playback drops.

The bad thing is, it's still completely unpredictable and makes absolutely no sense, it doesn't even pop up the "system overload" message.

 

And i'm going to try to switch to Logic, because this is too stressful for me.

 

It might be my Fireface400 card? I don't know. It's so hard to pinpoint.

Ploki, I know you’ve posted about this issue before but I can’t remember the exact scenario: is this problem occurring on only your Mac Mini or MacBook, or on both of them?

MacBook, i didn't run it on the Mini long enough to replicate it because it's very unpredictable.

I have absolutely no clue what causes it, because the spots at which it happened have absolutely nothing in common.

 

The only thing constant so far was: it happens every rehersal, after 5-7 songs, and every live show, 5-7 songs.

No matter if mainstage is stopped, panicked between songs, low res. mainstage 3.3.2, 3.4.3, macOS 10.14.1, 10.14.6, ADAT extension enabled or disabled, buffer size 64 or 256, safety buffer on or off, ...