Nunstummy Posted June 16, 2023 Share Posted June 16, 2023 I use MainStage for live performance and love having access to all my virtual instruments and the layering and midi flexibility. But it’s not always stable. In rehearsal MainStage will suddenly lose the expression pedal, or the default volume of a channel strip, or just something that you’ve planned and rehearsed suddenly doesn’t work. I used to think it was my midi controller keyboard, but these issues happen on all 4 of my midi controllers (LaunchKey 49, M-Audio, Arturia and Roland). And I’m running MainStage on a MacBook Pro M1 Max 32gb / 4tb - so plenty of ram and cpu. I tolerate the stability issues and to mitigate risk, I rehearse - which is a bit more like debugging. I pare down my patches to the 20 or 30 I need for a particular show to keep the concert file lean. Sometimes I build duplicate patches into my concert, so if 1 patch gets screwy, I just drop to the next one (duplicate). just curious if others experience stability issues too? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atlas007 Posted June 16, 2023 Share Posted June 16, 2023 (edited) How all those controllers do they connect to your Mac? Are you using some kind of patch bay or merger device? Edited June 16, 2023 by Atlas007 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nunstummy Posted June 16, 2023 Author Share Posted June 16, 2023 Via USB wth an OWC Thunderbolt hub. In my studio, the Launchkey 49 MK3 and a Launchpad X are usually connected as my daily drivers. When I'm remote, I use an NI Kontrol M32 directly into the USB C ports of my Macbook Pro. When playing a live gig with Mainstage, I tend to take my Roland A-33 because it has 76 keys - it has old 5 Din midi connectors, so I have Roland UM-ONE midi to USB adaptor. I recently added a cheapo Worlde Easycontrol .9 (velco'd to the A-33) because the A-33 has no faders or encoders. It was easy to map the Easycontrol to MainStage and this gave me control of channel strip faders, mute buttons, plugin levels with the encoders, etc. The A-33 was literally a barn find for $75. After a good cleaning and some minor repairs, it works quite well. Hmmm... as I write this, I realize this setup sounds overly complex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maddcow Posted June 16, 2023 Share Posted June 16, 2023 (edited) I’ve been using MainStage since v1.0 and whilst it had tended to be up and down in terms of bugs and performance with different versions, I’ve never experienced or heard of the issues you’ve described. Are you absolutely sure that your cables, hub etc are 100% reliable? Please note that I’m not a MS fanboy trying to irrationally deflect criticism away from MS; it’s just that in my experience, something like you’ve described has often eventually been a difficult-to-diagnose hardware issue. As an example, this happened to me i.e. I was experiencing an intermittent pitch control problem that I blamed on MS. I eventually (after about 8 months of massive frustration) discovered that my pitchbend wheel WAS faulty but only under certain conditions that were impossible to predict. My recommendation would be to tripe-check all of your hardware connections, and even try different USB ports on your Mac. Glitchy USB ports - even on brand-new machines - isn’t an unknown problem, either. Which version of MS are you using? I’m accessing this forum on my phone and can’t see if you’ve included this info in your sig. Edited June 16, 2023 by Maddcow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atlas007 Posted June 17, 2023 Share Posted June 17, 2023 12 hours ago, Nunstummy said: Hmmm... as I write this, I realize this setup sounds overly complex. Insightful... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gacki Posted June 18, 2023 Share Posted June 18, 2023 Mainstage by itself has been reasonably stable for me; occasionally one or another plugin might run afoul (for example there once was a version of Dexed that didn't play nice with one particular version of Mainstage). Mainstage "losing" certain input devices is something that I only have experienced with non-"class compliant" devices and flaky drivers. And there's always the question of passive/active USB hubs and how they might influence things. A passive hub might not be able to deliver sufficient power to a certain device (or have other side effects). As an example: After moving to an M1 laptop I got myself a comparatively cheap passive USB hub to which I attached an SSD and a controller (because I wanted to attach the audio interface directly to the laptop). The connection to the SSD got frequently lost. Attaching the SSD directly to the laptop and running the USB interface from the hub however works fine. I somewhat naively expected the interface to draw more power than the SSD but that doesn't seem to be the case... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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