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Whats the best way to lower the CPU on mainstage.


guitarpoplin

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hey guys just wanting to ask how to lower the cpu. my cpu is between 24% to 65%

 

it goes to 65% when i switch chanels. so i need help im running a mac pro. with a hard drive dedicated to the music.

 

i run only logic and mainstage on it.

 

logic only goes up to 22% and goes down to 11% cpu. how do i make mainstage more like that.

 

cause i hate how laggy it is and how it messes up my computer

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logic only goes up to 22% and goes down to 11% cpu. how do i make mainstage more like that.

 

You are measuring the wrong thing in Logic. Logic uses the same (maybe even more) CPU when the tracks are in live mode, as they are always in MainStage.

 

BTW: Update to MainStage 2.0.1, that will lower it compared to 2.0.0

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I do not think your CPU usage is anything to worry about. It is a good idea to not have any other software running when using Mainstage, so that it can make full use of the CPU, that means up to 100%. When it is at 100%, that means that your CPU power is not enough, and it can start to affect the sound.

 

So I think your real problem is the latency. That depends largely on the audio interface and the instrument and effect plug-ins you are using. If these things are considered fixed, the main setting you can play with is the buffer size setting in the audio preferences. This is what the Mainstage manual says about this setting:

Smaller buffer sizes reduce the amount of latency, but also require more work from the CPU and may result in playback artifacts. You may want to try different settings to find the lowest setting that does not produce any artifacts.

 

So don't worry about using 20% or 60%, or even 80-100% CPU for short durations, as long as you do not hear any audio artifacts. Of course you should stress test your setup during practice, and leave some margin, because you don't want to go over the edge during a live gig and experience audio artifacts then.

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Smaller buffer sizes reduce the amount of latency, but also require more work from the CPU and may result in playback artifacts. You may want to try different settings to find the lowest setting that does not produce any artifacts.

 

 

I'm going to try that.

 

i plan on using mainstage for live. Guitar and play back track.

 

i only have mainstage up when i use it. so im going to try the buff size.

 

and for the audio. it goes from guitar to line in.

 

so i will try the buffering and see how that goes.

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One thing you might want to change if you're using audio channel strips is that it appears a lot of the default channel strips provided by MainStage have the processing set to stereo. In my case (and I imagine most cases) this is overkill and using up twice as much cpu as necessary -- for guitar effects these work fine in mono, and switching them to be mono reduces cpu.
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