mainstage != dual cores?

[leahbasskitten]

i have a macbook pro 2ghz 2gig ram, and i've rarely had issues overloading logic. and at times it suprised me, but thats not what this is about.

 

mainstage seems to only use 1 core. the meter is not double like in logic. and i CONSTANTLY get drop outs. i've even raised the buffer to 1024. it seems to at least not drop out if i uncheck the io safety buffer, but it pops and crackles.

 

also of course i upped the cpu threshold to 100% and mainstage's cpu meter shows 100%, but activety monitor shows and average of 50ish% and peaked no higher than mid 70%. and with a dual core, we still have 130% more to go.

 

i'm puzzled i'm the only one that has said anything so far.

[dbassfour]

Same thing happens to me.

 

Defintely don't use any Space Designer, or any of those other guys.

 

I did find tho, that even though it hovers around 70% it doesnt glitch.....

 

are you glitching out at all?

[leahbasskitten]

sorry it took so long to respond.

 

yeah it glitches out pretty quickly. it either just stops all tones, or stutters depending on what settings i play with. but trying to use ultrabeat with it is completely impossible. it will stop the loop. well, i guess my fun with mainstage was a short adventure!

[dbassfour]

Yeah - I learned it inside and out, then canned it. Too buggy. 70% CPU all the time...

 

Its good for just jamming at home with someone else - but certainly not ready for perforamnce.

 

Im going to use Ableton Live and Kore, or maybe even just Kore - Its pretty rad - pretty powerful both of them and they arent being ignored by their developers like mainstage is.

 

Im hoping that Mainstage 1.5 or 2 will be better equiped next time around - or maybe Logic will open up its plugins in a true AU capacity instead of being locked within Logic.

 

 

- Dion

[Jon Kubis]

Hahaha... I laugh. Mainstage is a perfectly usable tool, but it is just that, a tool. I've dumped my entire rig for Mainstage, but like any synth, you have to respect the things it does well, and avoid the things that it doesn't. It goes out internationally with me all the time--and I've never had it collapse in the middle of a show. Haven't had a single drop out in a VERY long time.

 

1) Avoid SCULPTURE, SPACE DESIGNER, PLATINUMVERB, and third-party AUs like the plague.

2) Use (1) reverb on an aux. Commit to it. If you HAVE to use Space Designer, it's ONE instance only. Stick to ONE instance of Guitar Amp Pro as well. I have a patch with (2) instances and it teeters on the edge (85%), but still no drop outs.

3) Set your EXS24 and ES2 polyphony and key ranges accordingly. If you don't need the full range for a string layer, or whatever, don't set it.

4) Tone down the effects on stock channel strips. You don't need 5 effects for a perfectly fine piano sound. Pull up the most intense layer you can think of, dump all the effects. Should run below 60%.

 

I run at 128 latency solid every gig. I've got 4gigs of RAM in a laptop and after my Mainstage session loads (about 2 minutes), I have a little under a gig free. I'm playing layers, stacks, splits, sample triggers, a couple Ultrabeat arpeggiators, and occasionally a plug in a guitar and play rhythm through guitar amp pro. I've got around 150 patches in my concert and have lots of concert-level, and set-level programming as well.

 

It CAN be done. I'm never going back. =)

 

JK

[Orsanct]

Thanks, JK, for the specific recommendations. Most helpful!

[Drywsef]

Hahaha... I laugh. Mainstage is a perfectly usable tool, but it is just that, a tool. I've dumped my entire rig for Mainstage, but like any synth, you have to respect the things it does well, and avoid the things that it doesn't. It goes out internationally with me all the time--and I've never had it collapse in the middle of a show. Haven't had a single drop out in a VERY long time.

 

1) Avoid SCULPTURE, SPACE DESIGNER, PLATINUMVERB, and third-party AUs like the plague.

2) Use (1) reverb on an aux. Commit to it. If you HAVE to use Space Designer, it's ONE instance only. Stick to ONE instance of Guitar Amp Pro as well. I have a patch with (2) instances and it teeters on the edge (85%), but still no drop outs.

3) Set your EXS24 and ES2 polyphony and key ranges accordingly. If you don't need the full range for a string layer, or whatever, don't set it.

4) Tone down the effects on stock channel strips. You don't need 5 effects for a perfectly fine piano sound. Pull up the most intense layer you can think of, dump all the effects. Should run below 60%.

 

I run at 128 latency solid every gig. I've got 4gigs of RAM in a laptop and after my Mainstage session loads (about 2 minutes), I have a little under a gig free. I'm playing layers, stacks, splits, sample triggers, a couple Ultrabeat arpeggiators, and occasionally a plug in a guitar and play rhythm through guitar amp pro. I've got around 150 patches in my concert and have lots of concert-level, and set-level programming as well.

 

It CAN be done. I'm never going back. =)

 

JK

 

Jon, since you seem to tour with this rig I thought I would ask if you knew of a way to directly select a patch instead of scrolling through them. If the only way to do this is to have designated buttons on your controller send program change commands, would you know how to program this?

Thanks,

Dryw

[mmm42]

Same thing happens to me.

 

It is the same behavior in Logic, when tracks are selected (and therefore in "live-mode"). Logic can only offload tracks to other cores, if they don't require a low-latency (see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3161)

[leahbasskitten]

whoa! thanks so much for the tips!

 

it just sucks that most of the logic presets violate all these rules.

[Bill Burgess]

Just thinking out loud here.....I don't see anyone talking about MainStage's relationship to iChat, Airport and Time Machine. These apps give MainStage fits and need to be turned off. I found out long ago that Live 7.10 drops the firewire audio out when Airport is on. MS has similar issues. Another problem would be too many files and folders on the desktop. Each one takes RAM just to exist. Also big tif files as desktop pictures should be avoided and you should try and have at least ten gigs free per 100 gigs of space. Lastly I'm curious if running disk warrior to optimize helps at all.

Best Wishes

[Viv Savage]

Just thinking out loud here.....I don't see anyone talking about MainStage's relationship to iChat, Airport and Time Machine.

Somehow I don't think many people are running a combination of these programs. I mean, when I am in the studio or on stage (where I use the program) I don't chat or check my email... I must confess I was tempted to order pizza once during an extremely long guiar solo thoughl internet would have been handy at that time...

[Bill Burgess]

True true....you might even want to do a full laptop back up on time machine during the bass solo. The only culprit here is Airport of course. I run my laptop into my studio mains + sub for iTunes etc. One day I wanted to check the low end for some Ableton sequences I was preparing and none of my songs would playback...not even out of the headphone jack. After sorting drivers I traced it to the Airport.

The other day MainStage had MiDi and fader activity for mic input and instruments. Itunes played fine so it wasn't the driver. It was Airport. I turned it off and MainStage 're-aquired' my apogee hardware out-put without even relaunching the concert.

All Good

whens the pizza coming?

[Viv Savage]

whens the pizza coming?

You're too late, it's already gone If you only mentioned it earlier I would have ordered two.

 

Seriously when I got my MacBook Pro I immediately reformatted it, created two users (the Admin one and the normal Logic user) and installed Logic and the various plugins needed. For the rest I turned anything off that is not needed (bluetooth, airport, etc.). That way I won't be tempted to use it for other uses either. Apart from the internet stuff that is embedded within OS X there is no way to get out. Just the way I like it.

[ochikubo]

Looking at this article on multiple processor optimization on Logic, does Mainstage only use one processor and not balance across multiple processors? Like towards the end of the article when you highlight the track?

 

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3161

[mmm42]

Looking at this article on multiple processor optimization on Logic, does Mainstage only use one processor and not balance across multiple processors? Like towards the end of the article when you highlight the track?

 

MainStage treats all active channel strips as live, just as if you would select tracks in Logic. MainStage can't offload "tracks" to other CPUs to minimized the CPU load, because this would increase the latency, which Logic can and will compensate for on non-live tracks. MainStage as a live-app can't compensate latency.

[lohogan]

As far as directly going to a patch goes, it's very easy to duplicate the presets you want to use and copy them to the end of the concert. When I play in church every Sunday, during rehearsal I set up what patches I'm going to use and add them at the end. Then I divide the patches up with folders listing the name of the song and the key it's in (That key thing has been massively helpful over and over.)

 

Then when next week comes, you delete all the new stuff and start over, or get really lazy and just edit the song names and drag new patches down.

 

Also, you can have a button on your Korg nanoKontrol that goes to the next patch, and one that goes to the previous patch. At $60, there's no reason not to have something as awesome as the Korg nanoKontrol. It makes Hammond possible.

 

I also discovered that if I want to pop back and forth between two patches, I can set the sustain pedal to be "next patch" on the first one, and "previous patch" on the second one. That way, I get the second patch as long as I'm holding the sustain down, and revert back to the first patch when I let go.