Are audio only mixer templates resource hogs??

My gig template is about 70/30 audio/synths and audio seems to be the lighter of the two in my case. Are you running a lot of audio plugins on your channel strips? Or at least, are the ones you're running fairly resource-intensive?

A number of users on this board will disagree with me but I've found MS v2.2.x to be heavier all-round with CPU-usage....which is why I'm still running v2.1.3. I'd be really interested to see how your template responds with v2.1.3 but unless you got MS with Logic Pro (and have since upgraded to v2.2.x), there's not really any way for you to get v2.1.3...plus v2.1.3 wouldn't be able to load a template that has been saved in v2.2.2.

I'm also a bit surprised that your CPU is idling at around 45% with a concert full of software instruments....that's pretty high but I guess still within reason for v2.2.2 which (for me) has always idled much higher than v2.1.3.

I'd definitely check which plugins you're running. Post back with some more info about this, as well as which audio interface you're using.

LexCan, can you elaborate on what you're trying to achieve by having me creating a new concert with the 8 channel mixer w/1 Playback template? My system specs are better than yours and will therefore affect the outcome if you're wanting to compare your results with mine. For what it's worth, I created the template with both v2.1.3 and v2.2.2: v2.1.3 is idling with CPU 3-4% and RAM at 6% and in v2.2.2, CPU is 12% and RAM is 7%.....both tests were done without my audio interface i.e. using just onboard audio. However, v2.2.2 uses a different algorithm for CPU usage compared with v2.1.3 and so you can't really gauge MainStage's performance using only the CPU usage stats....but I guess it's easy to see if there's a widely disparate difference. To be honest, I think your processor speed is the primary factor here. I've compared my stats with a friend who's running an entry-level 2011 MacBook Pro 13" Quad Core and he can load up 2-3 times the plugins compared to my templates and not even break 50% CPU usage when idling.

I also noticed there are 2 instances of Space Designer running in this template. For live use, I'd definitely switch out Space Designer with another reverb plugin in your case as SD can be a real resource-hog.

My system specs are: MacBook Pro 17", 3.06 gHz Core Duo, 8GB RAM, OSX 10.7.2

Something else you need to mention is what buffer size you're using....I'm running at 64 samples.