Mainstage 3 - Okay, I'm sold.

Not quite sold yet, maybe your video convinces me.

 

Not a part of Mainstage in particular, I am sure it is the best option out there if you are in need of a live host. Since there is hardly any competition on either Mac or Windows.

My issue might be a bit off topic, but I don't like the idea of depending on a computer system in a live environment. That kind of scares me, even though we live in 2017 and our phones are just as powerful as a Intel Pentium II cpu. Mostly being afraid of unstable performance or a crash happening in the middle of gig. Maybe I am just paranoid and need to embrace the positives and the negatives because any workstation synth could crash during the act. Which I actually had happen during a rehearsal.

It only takes 30$ and patching up my MBP to see if it works for me.

 

I'm a windows man, but I have to admit that Mainstage does this job very well. I pimped out an i7 mac mini a few years ago for this exact purpose. I don't even bother bringing a monitor/keyboard along, just turn it on and everything automatically loads ready to go. I control patch changes with a midi surface etc. If anything does go wrong, I just log in with teamviewer on my iPad, but I rarely need to do this. Great fun!

 

A lot of the theatre keyboard players in Australia use Mainstage. I haven't delved deeply in to it, but it is intuitive.

 

Hey all - Sean - autopilot from v.i. here - I cover the keyboard programming and support for a lot of the musicals here in Oz with MainStage.

It's great when it works - nothing like it.

 

Well even a weeny dropout is a big deal when musicals are so Keys and sample heavy these days - like anything.

So the buffer size creeps up - 256 at least. I found myself converting stuff to the EXS24 away from Kontakt for example. I stuck with LASS for legato (and it sounded great) but converted a lot of other stuff like pizz to a single bank of EXS 24 - ended up not using any modulation - that kind of thing... kept it much simpler.

Although they sound great I ended up staying away from any NI stuff and other VIs apart from Kontakt. Being ultra careful with all of the settings - leaving processor out of the Mainstge resources to deal with the system - that kind of thing.

Using Aliases is a really great way to lower your CPU and memory load as well... make a patch with all of your instruments in it, and the use Aliases through the whole run, rathe than 28 Spicc patches for example.

Hardware is also a really big deal as well - Last show I did on laptop, we were working from a generation of macbook pros that didn't have enough juice in their GPU so you'd stick it into full screen mode and it would absolutely die. Which was hilarious for me because I'd test everything in workspace mode, torture it, get it sounding great and then I'd hand it over and as soon as the keyboard player went into full screen mode and played the overture it'd die a million deaths - as would I internally

Have ended up sticking to RME, and MOTU hardware and that seems to have helped as well - I think the UA Apollo's have a good rep as well

I suspect too that going MIDI in rather than using the internal USB bus helps as ell.

About to do another show on laptop though so will see how it goes...

For me - for the laptop gig I did, I ended up moving away from the laptop and used a redundant Qlab rig I'd built in 2010 with a couple of mac minis in it and a Radial Switcher and it worked with MainStage flawlessly. Still is working flawlessly - . Touch wood.

 

And yeah - redundant systems is where it's at - but given two mac minis and a couple of interfaces cost less than some of the hardware synths that's not such an issue.

 

I've seen mainstage put to great use in very complicated live performances (Even on standard laptops). I was sold the minute I saw it in action!

 

I'm fairly certain that Pendulum use Muse Receptors to run all their VSTs during live shows, then have a bunch of MIDI gear to control switches. Is that the sort of thing you're talking about?