Mainstage CPU spikes

dhjdhj, I have no problems spending the money to get MaxMSP but it looks to me like your setup would take an awful amount of time and work to set up. I visited your website and whilst I'm pretty tech-savvy, my eyes started to glaze over when you began talking about JavaScript in regards to persistence......

By the same token, I probably wouldn't mind paying someone to create a custom MaxMSP setup for me if it'd be more reliable than MainStage. I still can't get over the fact that new updates are virtually requiring customers to have the latest hardware in order to avoid resource/audio problems that other DAWs don't seem to have any problems with. It's bloody ridiculous.

The blog is really set up for others in the development community, it's not aimed at endusers.

It actually doesn't take a long time to setup --- once the basic environment is defined (which would be similar to MainStage's layout), new routings can be setup almost as quickly as with MainStage, it's just not as end-user friendly since my only goal was to make a solid reliable live environment, I wasn't thinking of mass marketing the stuff.

I actually do custom Max work, in the middle of a project for a well known artist in NYC right now actually. Would be happy to talk to you --- feel me to contact me through my website.

Dear dhjdhj, do you think your way is fair? I’ve never seen people into a “cocacola” forum say to others….hey, go to “pepsi”… This is not my company forum…. If not a ban will be in your head for sure ! MaxMSP is not the only solution, In the world there are also Reason, Logic himself, Live, Seelake Audiostation, But this is a MAINSTAGE forum…. Probably you forget it !!!! We are here to discuss about problems and solution of mainstage…. Not here to convince other people to go to your preferred software…. This is an apple support comunity Actually I’m working with mainstage without any problem…. Thousands users are in my condition…. Hundreds having problems…. We are here to solve their problem….. How many people working with MaxMSP in order to say that is the solution to all the problems? Do you have enough statistic? I think no…. less than 1% number compared to mainstage users…. Maybe less Why you are not discussing in Max forum instead of here? Are you taking some advantage for this free ads? There are some issue, some differences between Cpu spikes with sw 2.1.3 and 2.2.1 Let’s talk about it…. This is the point …. ….. you don’t have 2.2.1, right???? So you are not in the position to help…just to confuse I’m not having issue at all with 2.1.3 3 keyboards with midi ABC I’m using kontakt, exs24, massive, fm8, heavy plugin, and no problem…. I spent hundreds euro to have my setup…. I was thinking a lot before spending my money in a proper way….. Don’t make confusion to people that can think that Max can be better just because one person….. I repeat… 1 person (you)…is speaking about it !!!!!! We are not wasting money just because 1 user is suggesting this…. I will be glad to help people with problem to found a solution, or a direction for this…. But I will never suggest them to go and spend money for other software like you are doing And last question…… Why are you still here? Not enough Max user to speak with? Are you feeling alone? Or maybe are you working for and with Max developer????

I personally don't have a problem with somebody suggesting somebody elses product if Mainstage is NOT WORKING PROPERLY! I've been a mainstage user live on stage since the first version, and all I can say is that

Mainstage 1 worked flawless for me, but every updgrade and update since has made mainstage worse and worse and worse, and I have had to spend more money to buy New Versions of mainstage twice now, only to find that it made my problem WORSE AGAIN!. So tell me, after all these years, we are all still having the same problems and they are not getting better, but Worse, then at what point do we finally turn our back on Mainstage? How long can we stay loyal to an application that has become a part of our life in so many ways, yet keeps letting us down? Sometimes the best solution is to try something else, and although I don't have the time or patients to start to figure out MaxMSP, I will say that my original live setup was writtin entirely in a Logic environment using one of the first Logic Versions for mac, so anyway, that's my 2 cents, which will probably be spent on another apple upgrade that won't fix my issue.

Leo

Synthonia wrote:

....blah blah blah...

Who are you, another Rush Limbaugh? Check your facts before you question the motives of others.

I've always been a big fan of MS. If it works perfectly for you, that's wonderful. I deeply wish it worked wonderfully for me. I've responded with support answers to many in the past. It costs $30 these days, so it's definitely worth checking out. Clearly it works fine for many people.

Nevertheless, I have found that I cannot depend on it for my own environment. It's a **** shame but it's a fact. I don't ignore facts! I don't know why it breaks from time to time (and you don't either!) but I'm not willing to get up on a stage and have half my brain worried that it's going to blow up on me at some random point during a performance.

For others who are struggling, there are a number of commercial competitors to MS but none of them have the functionality of MS. I've looked at many of them. But for those who need the reliability, who aren't seeing it in MS, and who have the tech skills, a DIY approach in Max is a very viable solution.

I still strongly recommend one run it on Apple hardware (I don't recommend MS for any musical stuff) so I'm certainly not an anti-Apple person, and indeed I have a vested interest in Apple's success.

Nevertheless, if Apple wants to ban my comments, they absolutely have that choice. In the meantime, since I still get notifications for this particular thread, sometimes I respond!

FWIW, I have absolutely no connection to Cycling74 other than as a customer.

For apple to ban your comments would mean they actually view the comments in the Forum, which is obviously not the case or we might have had a fix by now.

Well, I'm hoping things have cooled down a little on this thread. Wow! Nothing wrong with folks like dhjdhj sharing their experiences with what is or is not working for live performance software, especially when their input is factual and not bashing, which I believe to be the case here.

I wanted to report that after two weeks of testing, tweaking, and tuning MainStage 2.2.1 on a new Mac Mini Server, I finished my first solo live performance last night. Everything ran flawlessly, with the CPU meter idling at under 30% all night with <10 ms round trip latency. No audio problems, no glitches, no spikes. And this was with CueMix FX (MOTU Ultralite software) and Reaper (used for multtrack recording of gigs) running alongside.

I have renewed faith in MainStage but, as mentioned, so much is dependent on the hardware and plug-ins you use with it.

Just curious, what do you use for a monitor? I've been thinking of picking up a mini to back-up my MBP.

Hi,

nice to hear that you have a system running well. Do you have Native Instruments Kontakt 4 or 5?

Probably with Session Strings Pro?

If yes, could you check MS with this plugin? As already posted in this thread, I desperately try to get MS running with NI Kontakt in a stable, performant way. I have a MBP 2.2 Quad Core with 16GB, very fast SSD (Samsung 830 256GB) and am still suffering from spikes, glitches etc. and a CPU Bar that runs immediately in the red range, as soon as I start to play. I have just one patch created in MS and all the things done already suggested in different forums for performance optimization, buffer Size is 256, hardly possible to work live with it.

So I would still like to know if I'm doing something wrong (configuration) or if it is still a MS problem ...

@dingdangdawg Indeed it's good news. I do have the latest version of MS and if I have some time, I might play with it again for use with some quick 'n dirty stuff. However, the fact of the matter is that I've spent sufficient time on my custom stuff that it now has much more functionality than MS (although it's not as simple to configure) so I've very little incentive to drop it at this point. But **** it, MainStage is so much prettier looking!

@splashonline I have run Kontakt 5 with Session Strings Pro with MainStage in the past with no explicit problems tied directly to it. It has worked just fine. In fact, I've never been able to correlate problems to a specific plugin or library --- that would have been too easy.

I picked up a "DoubleSight DS-90U" tiny 9" USB monitor. I didn't need much screen real estate, and try to keep my live setup as light and small as possible, so I have that as my monitor and a very small GearHead keyboard/trackpad. Its working out nicely for live performance, but both are two way small to use for a lot of initial setup design and tweaking, so I use sometimes just link my MacBook to the Mini using Splashtop Remote and use the MacBook monitor and keyboard to do that stuff. If you get a Mini, I recommend the quad i7 Mac Mini Server if you want top speed. But the cheaper ones would probably work great.

@splashonline: I don't use these plug ins. I do know that I was having issues using a 2.0GHz Macbook, then upgraded to a 2.4GHz, and gave up on that too (both were Core Duos). It wasn't unitl I started using this 2.0GHz quad-core i7 that things started working well. I am surprised that a quad core MB is not working out for you. The only thing I can suggest is seeing what happens with some of the stock templates, see how they run, then add in a plug-in at a time and see how they impact performance.

Hi,

I'm using in my concert many Kontakt 4 patches,

and I'm using heavy libraries as well like Alicia's Key Piano without issues.

I'm not using session string pro, but I think that Alicia is heavy like them in order to make a proper comparison

I'm creating patches with different levels of layer and split, but I take a care a lot about the DB that in my experience should stay below 0 in order to don't give problems to the overall stability.

As far as I know 2.1.3 spend less CPU resource that 2.2 version, so I kept the previous version.

But seem that 2.2.1 is quite better that 2.2. I didn't update yet so I cannot tell you 100% tested

did you alreay update your mainstage to 2.2.1 in order to check?

Hi

thanks, believe me I'm also more as surprised that it doen not run with a MBP Quad i7. I tried all Versions of MS 2.1.3 up to 2.2.1. There is a change in the performance bavior, but not in that way that it solves the problem.

@Synthonia. We had a direct contact few weeks ago. Thanks for that again. I did all the recommendations, but the problems are still the same.

I don*t know what all the others are doing in their configuration.

Yes, keep dbs below 0 on all the patches and your CPU usage is much less.

I added a Universal Audio UAD-2 Solo Laptop card and moved almost all of my effects processing on to the Sharc processor on the card. (It plugs into the Express34 slot.)

Now I'm running at about 45% usage when nothing is happening, but the max usage puts me up to about 85%, instead of over 100% so often. Apparently, a lot of my CPU usage was from multiple instances of EQ, compression, and an instance of Space Designer. Some of these weren't even enabled, but they were still using cycles. (Use the Goldverb instead of Space Designer for reduced CPU, btw. Probably up to 10% some of the time.)

I'm using multiple 1176LNs, LA2As, and a reverb, with excellent results. Since this is live, I'm running with no sample buffers, which adds about 10% CPU load, but with the processing being done on the card, the peaks have smoothed out. Plus, it sounds AWESOME. I processed the strings through an LA2A, and they got so creamy I can pour them on my pancakes. This is the one! I'm guessing I have about 50% more processing power.

Check them out at http://www.uaudio.com/