concerts and patches. most efficient way to setup

[shaneblyth]

I am new to mainstage and noticed if i loaded a ton different patches in a concert that it chewed the memory up especially.

I am not sure how mainstage exactly loads patches in but quite a few of mine have similar patches such as a particular grand piano layered with other sounds.

E.G piano plus strings

piano plus bass split

piano only

piano plus voices

 

I also assume that in layered patches like piano bass split and strings that some plugins may be getting loaded a few times

 

SO I was hopeing for some advice on the most efficient way to set up a concert and even the patches with a concert.

 

What do people do to lessen the load on the system and make things more efficient

[Robert Wilson]

I'd like to hear views on this too.

 

I've set up a patch for each song (we use backing tracks) but I'm sure this is really inefficient.

[Comma]

I'm not sure which is better, BUT I rarely have problems with RAM. I'm usually using about ~750MB out of the 2GB I have available.

 

I have a separate channel strip for each instrument, changing when necessary, but I'm pretty sure Mainstage doesn't "Double Load" samples, in that if you have 3 instances of the Piano, you won't use 3x as much Ram as one instance.

[Robert Wilson]

I have 12 songs, loaded as individual patches and so far I'm getting about 10% cpu and 20% RAM on a 4GB Macbook 2GHz Core 2 Duo.

[johngronlund]

basically i keep it very, very simple. all to keep cpu and ram usage low.

 

i know understand it's probably overkill or just plain hard core but i:

 

* create exs instruments for all au synths or whole channel strips. that is, fx printed on the sampler files.

* use only one channel strip for my guitar amp. the rest is aliased from that one. for individual fx i keep a channel strip with the pedalboard plugin.

every song has it's tempo set so delays change on the fly.

* mostly i also take away all notes i'n not using for the live part. meaning, a full blown piano might take 200-300mb or much more ram.

if i only play three chords, then why not cut out the extra weight. this means my three chord piano now takes more 5-15 megs instead.

 

this makes for stiff set.. but very cpu/ram friendly.

 

at the moment i don't really do any live cc's. like turning a know to make a funny sound. ... maybe since that time at the apple pro expo (or whatever it's called) i attended in berlin. they tried to show off cc with a wah,, needless to say it crashed. i guess that was mainstage 1.0.0.. so it's probably more stable by now.

 

back then i also used to have a bunch of patches for the whole concert.. i found it too cluttered and switched to dividing every song into a set and then creating the corresponding patches in every set.. nowadays very happy with this organization of things.

 

everything works smoothly and plays fine with a buffer setting of 128.

 

 

 

on a side note i can say that me and my mates use logic for backtracks and patch changing on our two mainstage computers.

fluqe's onstage program is pure gold for this and it'll only get better when their new onstage arena app gets released (still in beta).

 

so in short:

 

at the end of a song logic send a program change to mainstage thru the internal iac midi buss. onstage then open the next song. when the drummer starts the song with a midi play command logic sends patch changes thru midi two our two mainstage rigs to switch sounds throughout the song.

at the end yet another patch change send to onstage.app and the loop keeps on from there.

 

maybe my first (simplify simplify) comes off as a bit ironic to the whole system... but for mainstage i just keep it simple and it works well

 

that about what i can think of now.

[Robert Wilson]

I have 12 songs, loaded as individual patches and so far I'm getting about 10% cpu and 20% RAM on a 4GB Macbook 2GHz Core 2 Duo.

 

I added channel strips at concert level for one vocal and one guitar, plus sends for Reverb, Delay and Autofilter.

Now I'm getting red cpu readings and audio keeps cutting out.

 

RAM appears to be OK.

[Bill Burgess]

Actually the MainStage concert templates are the best model for efficient cpu usage. Trust me I know this as a fact. Take one of these concerts and import your own patches. Delete unneeded patches. You'll notice that the factory templates DON'T use Delay Designer or Space Designer but the little brother versions of those piggy plugs. They also use effects busses rather than adding separate verbs to the instrument channel strip. The biggest RAM suck in MainStage is the EXS sampler since that plays from RAM of course. The good news in MS 2 is that the EXS now has 'options/Virtual Memory settings available. Just like in Logic. So you could streamline your usage within the instrument to some degree. Samples do not double load in MS unless of course there are different samples in the instruments. In general it's best to load a EVP88 rather than a sampled version of the same thing or an ES1 rather than an ES2 etc. Sculpture is very cpu intensive. Also, under prefs / audio tab there is an I/O safety buffer check box. This in effect scans the system a second time to keep things 'safe' from pops but it takes RAM ! Uncheck it. Also in the same window is "silence previous patch". This should be set as low as possible. I don't know for sure but holding a 60 second hang time between patches seems a RAM suck to me as well. Avoid the Adaptive Limiter or any look ahead limiting plugs. No Phase Liner or Match EQ. Lastly, it seems a minor thing but scoop all your desktop icons and files into one folder before you play. Put your desktop picture to a factory color rather than using your own big tiff or jpeg files. Hide the dock. If you just can't at least turn off magnification and genie effect. They take RAM. Turn spotlight off in System Prefs. Turn off Airport, turn off software update. You can double check all of this using the Activity Monitor. Hope this helps;-))

[herr gunstig]

I don't know for sure but holding a 60 second hang time between patches seems a RAM suck to me as well.

 

The biggest concern for the length that notes are held is processing power (not RAM). However MainStage 2 is much more intelligent about holding notes compared to MainStage 1. It will try to detect when you are going to go into a CPU overload situation and cut off notes and channels from previous patches before 60 seconds if necessary -- 60 seconds is simply the maximum setting. It is also smart in that notes from the current patch can get cut off (at least for the built in instruments) in overload situations, kind of like how synths have a maximum polyphony. Except in the case of MainStage, polyphony is dynamic based on the number of effects and CPU power you have in your machine.