bennyvilner

Q: Latency occurring in the middle of gigs

This is pretty frustrating. When I'm hooking everything on stage, all seems and sounds right. Then, on many occasions, a sudden latency starts on all patches in the middle of the show. We're talking a half-second latency. What I usually do is quit mainstage, turn off my midi controller, unhook it, then hook it back, turn on mainstage and everything is good.

My setup is:

Macbook pro mid 2012, 2GHz i5

8gb RAM, 240 GB ssd

(I had a bad connector so I had my SuperDrive removed. it's empty)

Mainstage 3.2.4, 44.1 kHz sample rate, 128 sample buffer size

Nektar Panorama p6 midi controller (although it also happened with yamaha digital piano/korg nanokontrol2 duo)

Focusrite Saffire pro 24 audio interface

 

Any suggestions?

 

Benny Vilner

MainStage, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Jul 25, 2016 12:27 PM

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Q: Latency occurring in the middle of gigs

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  • by lifenoise,

    lifenoise lifenoise Jul 26, 2016 4:58 AM in response to bennyvilner
    Level 3 (758 points)
    Jul 26, 2016 4:58 AM in response to bennyvilner

    Try a higher buffer setting. Check I/O safety buffer. Quit all other apps, mail, Safari, wifi, Time Machine, etc.

  • by dmbono,

    dmbono dmbono Jul 26, 2016 6:31 PM in response to bennyvilner
    Level 1 (47 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 26, 2016 6:31 PM in response to bennyvilner

    In addition to Lifenoise's suggestions, I would add your entire hard drive to the privacy pane of Spotlight to prevent it from indexing while you're on the gig. 

     

    Since you have any empty bay in the laptop, you might want to consider adding a second 7200rpm HHD or SSD to it and moving your sample data there.  Separating the data processing and sample storage can help even out bottlenecks. 

     

    Finally, make sure your interface drivers are updated. 

  • by bennyvilner,

    bennyvilner bennyvilner Jul 27, 2016 7:39 AM in response to bennyvilner
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Audio
    Jul 27, 2016 7:39 AM in response to bennyvilner

    Thanks guys. I'll try your suggestions tonight.

    dmbono, how do I get to the privacy pane?

    BtW - I had a second hard drive instead of the dvd, the problem was in the connections to the motherboard or something like that...

    Benny

  • by Blueberry,

    Blueberry Blueberry Jul 29, 2016 1:34 AM in response to bennyvilner
    Level 4 (2,944 points)
    Jul 29, 2016 1:34 AM in response to bennyvilner

    I have to tell you: this is not a MainStage specific issue. I've seen reports like this against almost any audio app. It rather looks like it happens with USB audio devices under certain conditions. I think most people are simply using the internal audio and therefore never see this problem.

  • by lifenoise,

    lifenoise lifenoise Jul 29, 2016 4:59 AM in response to Blueberry
    Level 3 (758 points)
    Jul 29, 2016 4:59 AM in response to Blueberry

    You have a good point, Blueberry. I've had practically no issues since upgrading to a Thunderbolt interface.