ZeiZei Posted October 1, 2018 Share Posted October 1, 2018 I installed macOS 10.14 Mojave and my MainStage 3.3.2 was updated to 3.4 automatically during the installation process (which is not what I wanted by the way). With 3.4, I'm experiencing continuous extremely high CPU usage (150-250 %CPU) by MainStage and also getting audio engine overload warnings. In practice, my MacBook becomes almost unusably slow to do anything and changing between patches is too laggy for doing any live performance. Also, my MacBook is running super hot and fans are spinning top speed which is not nice. I'm running MainStage on MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) with 2,6 GHz Intel Core i5, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, and built-in 500 GB Apple SSD disk. I have never experienced such behavior with any previous MainStage versions. After the update to 3.4, I didn't change any settings in MainStage, only updated the sound library. The high CPU usage does not occur when I open just MainStage but when I open any concert the CPU goes up immediately and stays high as long as the concert is open. The reason is not that I would have something special in my concerts - this happens even with the simplest concert templates (e.g. Keyboard Minimalist) bundled with MainStage. Also, the issue occurs without any external MIDI or audio devices. Also, I don’t have any custom audio plug-ins, drivers, software etc. installed on my Mac. Sadly, I can't say if this issue it's something related to MainStage 3.4, Mojave, or their combination as they got upgraded same time. I'm have a gig coming in two weeks and I'm really frustrated and hopeless with the situation. Anybody else having similar issue? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maddcow Posted October 1, 2018 Share Posted October 1, 2018 If I was in your situation with a gig coming up, I’d be restoring my machine with a Time Machine backup to the previous OS and MainStage version. Can you do something like that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacou Posted October 2, 2018 Share Posted October 2, 2018 Having the exact same problem here. Mojave + MainStage 3.4 on an iMac that is more than suitable to run MainStage without problems. There wasn't any issue with MainStage 3.3.2 on High Sierra. My feeling is, that something goes wrong with the multithreading. MainStage is probably running only on one of my 4 cpu cores. Also I noticed that in the cpu usage monitor in MainStage the max % value is changing on the Y axis. So if a lot cpu power is needed the max value climbs up to 140% on my computer and if very little cpu is needed the max value goes down to 60%. But as soon as the usage goes anywhere close to the max value, my van starts to turn making a lot of noise. Not sure what exactly is causing the problem (not an expert here) but that behavior seems a little bit odd to me! Let's report back to Apple. Hope they will fix this very soon! Anyone else experiencing similar behavior? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeiZei Posted October 2, 2018 Author Share Posted October 2, 2018 Jacou, good to hear that I'm not alone with this and there's evidence that this is a real issue! Would you be kind and file a bug report with Apple at https://www.apple.com/feedback/mainstage.html. Does anyone know if there's any other channels to get in touch with Apple? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmm42 Posted October 4, 2018 Share Posted October 4, 2018 In the very first screenshot the CPU load looks low (in the MainStage toolbar). Activity Monitor is kind of useless for audio applications. Could just be that the overload message was a false positive – simply do not turn the overload alerts on and try. Does MainStage _work_ fine without the alert and without looking at Activity Monitor? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeiZei Posted October 4, 2018 Author Share Posted October 4, 2018 In the very first screenshot the CPU load looks low (in the MainStage toolbar). Activity Monitor is kind of useless for audio applications. Could just be that the overload message was a false positive – simply do not turn the overload alerts on and try. Does MainStage _work_ fine without the alert and without looking at Activity Monitor? No it's really not working fine! MainStage gets so slow that changing patch or getting anything else done takes several seconds. There is a real problem as many other users as well have reported around the web. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmm42 Posted October 4, 2018 Share Posted October 4, 2018 In a standard template concert? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeiZei Posted October 4, 2018 Author Share Posted October 4, 2018 In a standard template concert? Yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmm42 Posted October 4, 2018 Share Posted October 4, 2018 Interesting. Thanks a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DolmensDude Posted October 5, 2018 Share Posted October 5, 2018 2018 i9, 32GB here. I loaded that same standard concert. After loading, open Preferences | Audio | Advanced Settings. I have latency options from 16 samples to 1024 samples... You should see the differences in CPU use, including spikes, which switching from 512 to 256, to 128, 64 and 32. NO notes playing! Interesting to say the least! I'm actually seeing an issue in Audio Midi setup just trying to setup an IAC device with a single out port. Seems nearly impossible to do and if enabled, it seems to be a MIDI loop to boot! 4 Macs, all on Mojave, and MS 3.3 was fine with Mohave by the way, but the combo 3.4 and Mojave seems to be "different" - going to have to test! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickBenbow Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 I haven't had the system overload message but I'm getting this too. Played my first gig with new Mojave OS and MainStage 3.4 last night (same performance patch I have been using all year) and patch changing was noticeable slower. Sometimes held chords from previous patches were cut off when changing too - VERY destructive. The latency is not a problem and the keyboard graphics all look fine, but the CPU which normally flicks between 18% and 36% is MUCH higher for all patches. In particular using Contact (something I only use only for special reasons as I know MainStage hates Kontakt!) the CPU rapidly climbed to 100% with any heavy piano usage (more notes I'm guessing) and having reached it started cutting off sustained tones and making the whole sensitive piano part I was playing a joke. I followed all advice on cutting back memory and CPU usage ages ago as MainStage did sometimes crash on me, and have had it stable for a while now. Now this happens and I'm back to reality with a crash. Any help MOST welcome. Model Name: MacBook Pro Model Identifier: MacBookPro12,1 Processor Name: Intel Core i5 Processor Speed: 2.9 GHz Number of Processors: 1 Total Number of Cores: 2 L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 3 MB Memory: 16 GB Boot ROM Version: MBP121.0177.B00 SMC Version (system): 2.28f7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmm42 Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 Try disabling "Automatic graphics switching" in the Energy Saver preference panel to see if this fixes the issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickBenbow Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 Try disabling "Automatic graphics switching" in the Energy Saver preference panel to see if this fixes the issue. I cannot see that option - maybe that's another Mojave 'improvement'?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmm42 Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 Ahh, your Mac simply doesn't have a dedicated GPU. In this case it probably would have solved your issue to switch to it. No, not Mojave specific. The CPU issues you are seeing is indeed a weird combination between MainStage 3.4, macOS 10.13 and newer and specific Macintosh computers. The more stuff which is drawn (in the workspace), the worse the CPU load is. Under normal circumstances the graphics has zero impact on audio, but in a few very specific cases it sadly does. Please contact Apple via https://www.apple.com/feedback/mainstage.html if you haven't already done so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickBenbow Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 I have - here's hoping for a swift response! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jwhitesides Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 This isn't likely to help your situation: I'm running MainStage 3.4 on a 2015 MacBook Pro 2.2GHz i7 16GB Ram. I updated yesterday (after doing a full blown backup). I opened up a couple of massive MainStage concerts that have over 100 patches in them with complicated routing. Seeing no massive spikes in CPU, seeing smooth patch switching with no latency. Thus I'm not seeing the same issues that you are. However, this could be due to having a more powerful laptop with a 4 core i7. I believe this laptop also has a dedicated GPU. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
herr gunstig Posted November 12, 2018 Share Posted November 12, 2018 Did upgrading to MainStage 3.4.1 fix the problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacou Posted November 12, 2018 Share Posted November 12, 2018 Yep! At least for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MMU Posted December 8, 2018 Share Posted December 8, 2018 I also have seen worse performance, even with today's Mainstage update, although I have also recently upgraded my laptop to 2018 MacBookPro i9 which might be involved in my issues. Lots of spikes like below, even when not playing !! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmm42 Posted December 10, 2018 Share Posted December 10, 2018 These spikes are within two AudioUnits, might very well be them or even the system or both. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MMU Posted December 10, 2018 Share Posted December 10, 2018 Looking at the RME forum (see link below which also references other forums), seems users worldwide with new Mac HW are having similar audio problems so I'll wait for Apple to sort this then come back to computer audio. These major issues with audio quality happen from time to time sadly.... The spikes I'm hearing were not present in the same AUs a few months back with older (weaker) HW. (Things also degraded performance-wise when I updated Mainstage before updating my HW). I have the absolute best MacBook Pro money can buy (incl Vega 20, the only thing not maxed out is the SSD) so I'm sure this is an issue on Apple's side. Note also that only really OS code can block audio threads which generally have priority over everything else. The issue could also be Apple's USB stack as I use a RME Babyface Pro audio interface which connects via USB. I've spent many hours of my life debugging audio issues and have now learnt it's best to enjoy a few months off music and wait for the bugs to be fixed. : ) https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=136293#p136293 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickBenbow Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 Success yesterday. Two things I did which markedly improved things - opening MainStage in Low Rez mode and also changing the buffer size from 128 to 256. Worked beautifully after that with Kontakt instruments too. To all those who think this was obvious, NOTHING is obvious to everyone and sometimes it helps to post the basic stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maddcow Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 RickBenbow, I’ll bet money that you’re also going to see better CPU performance if you run MainStage in Edit Mode rather than Performance Mode. Can you try this and report back? I’ll virtually guarantee that you’ll see less CPU usage when in Edit Mode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickBenbow Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 Actually I have never run it in performance mode. Learnt the error of that way back in the day! But thank you it’s useful information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmm42 Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 Actually the reverse is true: Edit mode is missing certain optimizations, which Perform mode has. Also: you can have certain delays, etc. in Edit mode, which do not happen in Perform mode. One example is Auto-Save: that only happens in Edit mode and can stop/delay MIDI events during save for a little bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maddcow Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 mmm42, on machines without dedicated graphics cards, Edit Mode uses less CPU...I’ve seen this personally on nearly a dozen machines used by friends and colleagues. In every case, their CPU usage doubled (or more) as soon as they changed to Performance Mode. I realise this mightn’t seem logical but I’ve witnessed it personally many times and also read about it online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmm42 Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 That should be fixed in 3.4.2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maddcow Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 I doubt it. This has been a problem for years due to hardware limitations. I’ll check with a good friend of mine and see if 3.4.2 makes any difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gmatti Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 (edited) An update with Mainstage 3.6.6 and Ventura. I'm noticing a massive jump in CPU use by the ES2 when I stop/start playback in Mainstage. It's odd because nothing is actually triggering in my ES2, no MIDI playback or anything, but it spikes over 300% just clicking the playback on/off. I'll also mention a somewhat counterintuitive discovery... It seems that setting the buffer too high can actually cause clicks and overloads. I've encountered this with other DAW recorders as well. It seems the larger buffers call for larger "chunks" to be called for at a time, where smaller buffers make the CPU work constantly with smaller bites. A constant chug vs. feast or famine. I was having an awful time with dropouts and clicks during shows. I solved it by reducing my buffer and making sure any unused plugins or plugins with nominal settings (uneffecting) were removed. The buffer setting seemed to be the more effective of those two measures. Edited April 12 by Gmatti Additional information Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gmatti Posted April 15 Share Posted April 15 I'll also share, the balance you are striking is with notes getting cut off. If you go too low with your buffer you will hear notes get cut off. Like, if you hit one or two piano notes you're fine, but if you hit a block chord of 4-8 some get chopped off... In such a case you would need to INCREASE your buffer. Basically go as low as you can before that starts to happen. That's your middle ground Goldilocks zone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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