Mainstage CPU spikes

VI. Virtual Instrument. In other words, a soft synth or effect

I had mainstage 2.1.3 with lion and pianoteq and everything worked like a charm.

I had the bad idea to upgrade to 2.2 and now i'm getting cpu spikes without doing nothing, even on an empty concert created from scratch.

Also graphics are all garbled in edit mode (they show up perfectly on fullscreen).

this happens even if i create a concert file from scratch.

Sorry for the delay in responding. I get rid of all excess plug-ins. If the virtual instrument I use does not need comp, reverb or delay, I remove those effects from the patch. That helped to an extent. The other thing that helped was to change the audio settings by upping the amount of buffer. You will get more latency, but you can play with it to find a more optimal setting.

I will say that I just replaced my MBP and, although I've not had sufficient time to put it to the test, I noticed that the same patch on my old MBP used half as much CPU on my new one. Could be as simple as going from 2 cores to 4? So, yeah, maybe there's something using more CPU in 2.2. Hopefully it's a source code that Apple can fix.

@Blueberry and others:

The problem has nothing to do with the version of MS it is a problem of MS at all.

I just bought MS 2.2 as update, suffering still the same problem.

If I use just two instances of NI Kontakt 4 (Session Strings Pro) and East West Play (Symphonic Orchestra Platinum Plus) i get immediately a red CPU Bar in MS CPU Usage Window with all the audio artefacts of peaks etc.

My CPU Usage in the Activity Application is just aroun 10%!!!!!

I found one "workaround": I use both plugins, NI Kontakt and Play as standalone applications and integrate them in MS via "External Instrument". I can tell that the CPU Usage of the "Activity" App still shows some 10% and I have no longer audio artefacts. So it is definitely a problem of MS and nothing else. Apple should recognize it and take it seriously. With that behavior, MS is not useable on stage and more or less just a kind of toy for amateur/hobby musicians

Other apps like Ableton Live can also handle both plugins and lot of more of them without any problem.

If Apple does not care about these problems, they will lose customers. May be it is kind of a business strategy to leave the professional market like they did already in other areas ...

Actually.... are you sure is a problem of MS and not of your setting?

Can you tell us the buffer size for latency?

The AU are original?

I'm using mainstage 2.1.3 with snow leopard, I7 dual core and 8 giga of ram,

a concert plenty of Kontakt VI, some of them with samples like alicia's keys that is quite "heavy", layers, splits

I got reverb in bus in almost all the patches,

around 30 patches and 3 keyboards controlled by mainstage.....

no problem at all..... !!!!!!!!!

No spikes, everything just working....

I'm not using templates but I made my own.... but.....

do you think that radiohead, toto, simply red , nine inch nails, are using live mainstage and they are considering it instable??????

Update: after using the new 2.2 version for a bit i stopped having cpu spikes. Cpu usage remains high but there's no latency or malfunction, so, as long as MS does what it's supposed to do, it can use all the cpu i have ;-)

Some plugins are quite heavy, and kontakt is one of the heaviest. For sure what i can suggest in order to reduce cpu usage and having a lighter concert setup is this:

- position your VIs at patch level, not at concert level

- avoid overlapping objects on your layout

- check your system in order to avoid having too many background litte programs running (like dropbox, fantastical, ecc ecc.

So MS is perfectly usable in live, I'm using it since version 1.0 and the new 2.2 version since 1 month or so.

I have 38 patches, often multilayered with a maximum of 5 VIs at the same time, i use mostly physical modelling VIs, including pianoteq for piano, my ears can't stand samples.

Before mainstage i used logic to do the same job. I've tried many times but I've never been able to succesfully use Ableton Live.

I use a macbook 2.4ghz intel core 2 duo with 4gb of ram. Not that biggie ;-)

Chiccorosso ,

maybe ours is working perfectly just because it loves to work in Italy 🙂

I don't think suggesting to come in Italy to try mainstage here would be seen as a serious suggestion ;-) But for sure a pleasurable one.

Hi synthonia,

thanks for your answer. Of course I don't think Toto NIN et al would use MS if it was unstable. But then hundreds of users claiming the instability must be wrong or at least wrong informed, at least if it is question of right settings ....

My actual settings are 256 buffer size everything above is not possible to wor on stage. An of course my AU's are original. I hate piracy!!!!

Now I really wonder what you did in your configuration what I missed.

I use mostly sample based plugins. I tried all possible settings over weeks and months to improve the situation.

I expanded my MBP 2,2 GHz, i7 from 8 to 16 GB, I expanded it also with a Samsung SSD 830, the fastest one on the market - really a great impovement at least for sample based stuff.I tried to find answers in multiple user forums ....

In invested really a lot of time and money. But the result is more or less dissatisfying.

So one question: I'm from Germany. Would it be possible for you to get in touch personally? I would like to call you, best via skype if you'd agree.

The concept of Mainstage is a genius, maybeit is really a know how problem. In that case I'd like to apologize for blaming Apple ...

I'd look deep in your setup and log files to check for any anomaly. With such a hardware you shouldn't have any cpu hog...

Read your console application messages for any anomaly (/Applications/Utlility/Console.app)

hi Splashonline,

i'm not an apple employer, so you don't have to justify your stress 🙂 I can understand you...

in the past i had problem of frequent crashes....but was my setting problem, not MS2

I live in north west Italy, and is just 4 hours far away from south Germany.... so in case you live there I invite you to my place in order to make some double check between my configuration and yours.

Anyway,

in concert level I made 3 busses, in order to have 3 separate volume control for each of my 3 keyboards.

In the 3 Aux channel strips I set just a limiter and no fx.

All my patches are including at least 3 sounds...and none of them is at concert level.... all of them with his Eq setting and some of them with compressor. every patch is sent to his related bus.

I'm using NI kontakt and massive sounds as Virtual instruments together with EXS24, Es2 and Sculpture (that is quite heavy), but only logic plugins like Eq, reverb, ecc ecc... not third party.

As reverb I'm not using it directly in the channel strip but via bus to reduce the Cpu work.

I have 8 giga ram so I'm working with MS2 in 64 bit, but even when I was working in 32 bit was working without problems.

I read somwhere that cpu spikes more with ms2 at version 2.2, so I left my version to 2.1.3 in order to avoid problems.

I don't have an SSD so I don't know if this can help or not.

What for sure will help is to "switch off" internet connection while playing with ms2, and also close any other open application like safari, mail, ecc ecc

I don't have my concert in front of me, and so I don't remember exactly my buffer size..... but if my memory is not totally lost is 128.... 256 max

you can contact me by mail if you prefer, no problem, but probably will be helpful also for the others reading this post in case they will face your same problem....

marcperi@hotmail.com

Obviously, MainStage works just fine for some people. But it is failing intermittently for a significant number of users. Large bands use A-B (if not A-B-C) system redundancy to protect themselves from intermittent issues so their use of MainStage doesn't prove anything.

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do you think that radiohead, toto, simply red , nine inch nails, are using live mainstage and they are considering it instable??????

But it is failing intermittently for a significant number of users.....

this sentence it works also for windows 7, or OS X... or a DVD player or a car.....

I don't think that is working to me just because I'm "lucky" and you are not.... maybe I'm wrong....

but I don't think it depends by random causes the working or not working..... !

Sorry but no. When people talk about 99% uptime (for example), they mean that (within some small deviation) their product (app, website, computer) will work 99% of the time. But they mean 99% per year, not PER NIGHT

In other words, of course things break --- but as far as MS is concerned, it's breaking much more often than it should. I have rarely gotten through a complete rehearsal without at least one glitch with MainStage. If your car glitched every day, you wouldn't be happy!

On the other hand, after replacing MS with a custom environment that I built last year, I have had (so far) 100% glitch-free rehearsals, night after night.

Now it may very well be that the (not insignificant) number of users who are having the SAME problem with MainStage all share some common setup issue. But I don't know what that is and I'm not in a position to find out. This is something that Apple needs to do.

I think that is not a great suggestion into an official mainstage forum to say.... I abandoned it for a custom environment 🙂

Is like to go to a horse forum and say.... hey...my solution was a bycicle....

Don't you think that especially in this place check the differences between a working and stable project and setting and another one instable will be a good effort?

p.s. mine is working 100 %... not 99%.... no glitches !!!!! Sorry for yours 🙂