Solution for Playback plugin & audio engine reset

Hi all.

I've been using MainStage for about 9 years but only recently needed to use the Playback plugin for backing tracks as I was creating a concert for use by my church music team. It didn't take me long to find out that when playback is triggered in the Playback plugin, an audio engine reset is executed which results in silencing any instruments that are being played at the time. Obviously, this is a massive problem for anyone playing sustained chords when triggering Playback. There are some workarounds which require the Playback plugin not to be sync'd to the MainStage MIDI clock or using something like EXS24 to play tracks instead, but I wasn't happy with these workarounds.

On a hunch, I decided to try hosting my instrument plugins inside separate instances of Plogue Bidule (https://www.plogue.com/products/bidule/) on my channel strips. Guess what?? It works! i.e. the audio from those plugins does NOT get silenced by the MS audio engine reset. There's a faint "click" when the reset is executed but that's all. I have no idea why hosting instrument plugins inside instances of Bidule results in them not being affected by the reset but it works.

There's a slight increase in CPU usage with this solution and of course, you have to pay US$95 for Bidule but at least it works.

Hope this info helps the multitude of MS users who are incredibly frustrated by this stupid audio engine reset.